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John Douglas Adam 



EVERYDAY 
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COPYRIGHT DEPOSED 



UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 



EVERYDAY LIFE SERIES 

The Christian According to Paul: John T. Farts 
Psalms of the Social Life : Cleland B. McAfee 
The Many Sided David: Philip E. Howard 
Meeting the Master: Ozora S. Davis 
Under the Highest Leadership: John Douglas Adam 
Other volumes to be announced later 



EVERYDAY LIFE SERIES 



Under the Highest Leadership 



JOHN DOUGLAS ADAM 

Author of "Paul in Everyday Life," "Religion and 

the Growing Mind" "Letters of Father and Son 

During College Bays" etc. 



ASSOCIATION PRESS 

124 East 28th Street, New York 

1917 



-BS 



A^ oS 



>* 



Copyright, 19 17, by 

The International Committee of 

Toung Men's Christian Associations 



OCT 10 1917 



The Bible Text used in this volume is taken from the American Standard 
Edition of the Revised Bible, copyright, 1901, by Thomas Nelson & Sons, and 
is used by permission. 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



©GI.A'47395 0, 



TO 
E. B. A. 



CONTENTS 



I. SEEKING GOD. 



(i) What is Religion? (2) The Difficulty of Belief (3) The 
Difficulty of Unbelief (4) The Attitude of Doubt (5) The 
First Step — A Sense of Need (6) Mental Seriousness (7) 
Moral Seriousness 

II. RECOGNIZING THE HIGHEST LIGHT UPON 

GOD 12 

(1) The Insufficiency of the Independent Search for God 

(2) God Revealed Himself (3) God Revealed Himself Ac- 
cording to Human Capacity (4) God Revealed Down through 
the Centuries (5) The Supreme Revelation (6) Who Is the 
Supreme Revelation of God? (7) Why is Jesus Christ the 
Supreme Revelation of God? 

III. HOW IS CHRIST MADE REAL TO US? 23 

(1) The Testimony of the New Testament Regarding Jesus 
Christ (2) The Testimony of Christians Regarding Jesus 
Christ (3) Jesus Christ Made Real through Lives Which 
Suggest Him (4) Christ Made Real through a Personal Test 

(5) Christ Made Real through the Eclipse of Other Things 

(6) Christ Made Real through Concern for Others (7) Christ 
Made Real through Dispelling False Impressions 

IV. WHAT WAS JESUS CHRIST TO HIS FIRST 

FOLLOWERS? 35 

(1) They Saw God Focused (2) They Saw God Simplified 

(3) They Saw God as Humanly Available (4) They Ex- 
perienced God Within (5) They Experienced Forgiveness 
(6) They Possessed Power (7) They Found a Center for 
Social Unity and Progress 

V. SOME OBSTACLES IN THE WAY OF KNOW- 
ING CHRIST 45 

(1) The Mind Fixed upon a Moral Standard Rather Than upon 
Christ (2) The Mind Centering upon Personal Failure In- 
stead of upon Christ (3) Christ Eclipsed by Occupation with 
Good Work (4) Christ Eclipsed by Making Prayer an End 
in Itself (5) Christ Eclipsed by Thoughts of the Attitude of 
Others (6) Visualizing Jesus Christ (7) The Nearness of 
Jesus Christ 

VI. THE THOUGHTS IN RELATION TO CHRIST. . 55 

(1) The Place of Thought in our Relation to Christ (2) Think- 
ing upon Christ Is More Than Mere Reverie (3) Thinking 
upon Christ a Growing Habit of Mental Attention (4) The 
Element of Time in Relation to Mental Attention towards 
Christ (5) The Active and Passive Aspects of Mental Atten- 
tion towards Christ (6) The Passive Attitude in Mental At-^ 
tention towards Christ (7) The Active Attitude in Mental 
Attention 

vii 



Viii CONTENTS 



VII. THE WILL IN RELATION TO CHRIST 66 

(i) The Supremacy of the Will (2) Christ's Relation to Our 
Will (3) The Will Deciding (4) The Will Surrendering 
(5) The Will Appropriating Strength (6) The Will Cooperat- 
ing with Christ (7) The Will Forgetting Itself 

VIII. THE IMAGINATION IN RELATION TO CHRIST 76 

(1) Imagination as the Pioneer Faculty Upwards (2) Imag- 
ination as the Pioneer Faculty Downwards (3) The Relation 
of the Imagination to the Reason and the Will (4) The Rela- 
tion of Christ to the Imagination (5) The Christian Use of 
the Imagination (6) The Fight of the Christian Imagination 
(7) The Victory of the Christian Imagination 

IX. SOME ELEMENTS IN THE INNER CHANGE. 86 

(1) The Sense of the Love of Christ (2) The Love of Christ 
as a Supreme Fact (3) The Renewal of Our Affection (4) 
Christ at Work (5) Christ Relating the Life to Its True En- 
vironment (6) Christ Releasing from Slavery to the World 
(7) The New Patience 

X. THE RELEASE FROM ANXIETY 95 

(1) The Fact of Anxiety (2) Causes of the Anxious Attitude 
(3) The Unanxious Attitude (4) What the Unanxious Atti- 
tude Does Not Mean (5) Unanxious Regarding Spiritual 
Growth (6) Unanxious Regarding Influence (7) Unanxious 
Regarding Happiness 

XL THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF THE NEW LIFE. . 106 

(1) The New Simplicity of Desire (2) The New Humility 
(3) The New Efficiency (4) The New Conscientiousness 

(5) The New Ambition (6) The New Health (7) The New 
Comprehensive Economic Value 

XII. THE INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTION TO 

PROGRESS : 115 

(1) Personal Atmosphere (2) Suggestion of Eternal Reality 

(3) Moral Originality (4) Testimony (5) Social Sympathy 

(6) A Confident Spirit (7) Intercessory Prayer 

XIII. SOCIAL CONTACTS 127 

(1) The Family (2) The Church (3) As an Employer 

(4) As an Employe (5) As a Friend (6) The Community 
XT) The Nation 



CHAPTER I 

Seeking God 



Our goal is the presence of Jesus Christ. But we cannot 
begin there. For there are some whose company we greatly 
desire, who do not yet even believe in a personal God, and 
they are unable at present to pursue their search for God 
along the definitely Christian way. 

Still they are seekers, and insist upon starting with us 
from the spot where they stand. If you do not wish to 
travel with us over their bit of the road, meet us later ; in 
the meantime the rest of us will try to keep sympathetic 
step with our seeking friends. They ask for an elementary 
idea of the meaning of religion. 

DAILY READINGS 
First Week, First Day: What Is Religion? 

That they should seek God, if haply they might feel after 
him and find him, though he is not far from each one of 
us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being; as 
certain even of your own poets have said, 

For we are also his offspring. 

Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think 
that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, 
graven by art and device of man. — Acts 17: 27-29. 

Religion is life. It is human life seeking God. It is not 
primarily a discussion. It is an instinct in our nature press- 
ing beyond the visible world. This instinct for God springs 
from the most fundamental elements within us. It is one 
of the most persistent things in human history. It was not 
created by priests or theologians any more than flowers are 
created by botanists. The flower was before the botanist 
and religion was before the minister or the theologian. We 
seek God because we are what we are. As a human race 



[1-2] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

we cannot help ourselves. Everything finds its progressive 
life and destiny through a relationship with something else, 
which is the counterpart of its own life. The fish thrives 
in the water and dies when taken out of it. And man finds 
himself in his relationship with the unseen. This is the 
message of history, it is the testimony of experience in the 
most vivid zone of human consciousness. We are conscious 
of a capacity for what is beyond the seen, and no intellectual 
or other difficulty can permanently silence our fundamental 
persistent instincts. 

But belief in God has always been difficult for some people. 
Why? 

First Week, Second Day: The Difficulty of Belief 

Jehovah reigneth; let the earth rejoice; 
Let the multitude of isles be glad. 
Clouds and darkness are round about him: 
Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his 
throne. — Psalm 97: 1, 2. 

The writers of the Bible took belief in God for granted. 
It was the center of their thought and life and outlook. But 
they encountered clouds and darkness in their believing. 
Their faith was tried. It could not have been faith if it had 
not been severely tested. To sum up Browning's interpreta- 
tion in "Christmas Eve and Easter Day" : Faith may be God's 
touchstone; God does not reward us with Heaven because 
we see the sun shining, nor crown a man victor because he 
draws his breath duly. For many minds belief in God has 
great difficulties in an age of triumphant science, and in a 
period of universal tragedy. No one who sympathetically 
tries to understand the modern mental struggle can make 
light of the many aspects of difficulty of belief in God. And 
yet perhaps the most remarkable aspect of modern intellectual 
difficulty has bee^n stated by Professor Hoffding of Copen- 
hagen : "It is not so much the results at which science is 
arriving, or has arrived, which bring about the quarrel be- 
tween science and religion, and condition the religious prob- 
lem; but rather the whole trend of ideas, the entire habit 
of mind which empirical science has fostered in those who 
have developed under its influence." The supreme difficulty 
is not this or that point, but a habit of mind which remains 



SEEKING GOD [I- 3 ] 

when this or that point has been dealt with. Are the habits 
of our mind favorable to the solution of difficulty in belief t 

What have been the difficulties in the way of belief in 
our own lives ? 

First Week, Third Day: The Difficulty of Unbelief 

Then Jehovah answered Job out of the whirlwind, and 
said, 

Who is this that darkeneth counsel 

By words without knowledge? 

Gird up now thy loins like a man; 

For I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. 

Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the 

earth? 
Declare, if thou hast understanding. 
Who determined the measures thereof, if thou knowest? 
Or who stretched the line upon it? 
Whereupon were the foundations thereof fastened? 
Or who laid the corner-stone thereof. — Job 38: 1-6. 

Belief has difficulties. But are not the difficulties of un- 
belief greater? The problem of difficulty was not solved for 
Tolstoi when he entered upon a period of skepticism. He 
realized that he went from comparative difficulty to superla- 
tive difficulty. For him unbelief not only robbed the universe 
of rationality, but it paralyzed his human enthusiasm. "I 
need only to be aware of God to live, I need only to forget 
Him or disbelieve in Him and I die. To know God and to 
live is one and the same thing. God is life. Live seeking 
God and then you will not live without God." 

That which we all recognize to be of the highest worth in 
life loses its value without God behind all. Air. Balfour in 
his Gifford Lecture contends that if we would maintain the 
value of our highest beliefs and emotions we must find 
for them a "sufficient origin. "Beauty must be more than 
an accident. The source of morality must be moral. The 
source of knowledge must be rational.'' Which is more 
rational : to surrender to the difficulties of belief or of un- 
belief? 

On which side do we encounter the greater difficulties? 

First Week, Fourth Day: The Attitude of Doubt 
Now when John heard in the prison the works of the 

3 



[1-5] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

Christ, he sent by his disciples and said unto him, Art thou 
he that cometh, or look we for another? And Jesus an- 
swered and said unto them, Go and tell John the things 
which ye hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and 
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, 
and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good tidings 
preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever shall find 
no occasion of stumbling in me. — Matt, n: 2-6. 

With some, doubt is an attitude of intellectual adventure, 
with quite inadequate mental equipment for the experiment. 
They are like an inexperienced boy stranded on the road to 
the metropolis, who has slipped away from home without the 
ability to make his way; his pride will not let him return. 
He has neither a home nor a destination. There are others, 
unfortunately, to whom doubt is a place of refuge from an 
uncomfortable moral challenge. Doubt is welcomed as a 
relief. It is sought as an end in itself. The mind ceases 
to be open. 

There are various kinds of doubt, and a variety of motives 
which prompt doubt. The passage of Scripture quoted above 
illustrates the highest kind of motive. The doubter in this 
instance hated to . doubt, but for the moment he felt driven 
to it. It was caused by a misunderstanding, but the motive 
was right. He did not glory in his doubt. He was distressed 
by it. He longed to believe. His attitude was honest, earnest, 
inquiring. Browning says : "If you desire faith, then you've 
faith enough." At any rate, doubt that strives to get beyond 
doubting is on the open road to knowledge. 

Is my doubt a courageous attempt to reach the highest 
truth? 

First Week, Fifth Day: The First Step— A Sense 
of Need 

But when he came to himself he said, How many hired 
servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, 
and I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my 
father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned 
against heaven, and in thy sight : I am no more worthy to 
be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. 
And he arose, and came to his father. But while he was 
yet afar off, his father saw him, and was moved with com- 
passion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. — 
Luke 15: 17-20. 

4 



SEEKING GOD [1-6] 

The way to God is through some sense of need. We all 
have the need, because it is part of our nature. The differ- 
ence between some men and others is not that their funda- 
mental needs are so different; it is rather that some know 
what their needs are and others do not. Some know, and 
some do not know, what is the matter with them. Some 
know that they cannot get what they need in the depths of 
their being except from God. Others are trying consciously 
or unconsciously to get the satisfaction they crave everywhere 
else than in God. And it takes a long time for very many 
to find out just what it is for which their nature is craving, 
and just where to go in order to get it. The supreme funda- 
mental questions for us all are (i) What are our deepest 
needs? and (2) Where are these needs to be satisfied? It 
is a long story of disillusionment before most of us definitely 
face these two questions. 

But until something forces us to realize that "our souls 
are restless till they find their rest" in God, our interest in 
religion is likely to be a superficial affair. Is there not some- 
thing in our lives which is creating a deepened sense of need, 
a new responsibility, a difficult decision, a sense of short- 
coming, the guileless request of a child for light? 

First Week, Sixth Day: Mental Seriousness 

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, trying 
him: Teacher, which is the great commandment in the 
law? And he said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all 
thy mind. This is the great and first commandment, — 
Matt. 22: 35-38. 

"With all my mind." Mental seriousness is a condition of 
reality in religion. The quest for God demands the same 
mental attention as other pursuits command. And when there 
is a real sense of fundamental need for God, that sense of 
need will focus the mental interest, and deepen it. George J. 
Romanes, the brilliant scientist, illustrates this attitude of 
mental seriousness in his search for God. When he accepted 
evolution as a scientific dogma, he thought he must abandon 
his religious faith, and he withdrew his youthful book on 
prayer. But the question of a personal God was not closed 
for him. He maintained his attitude of deep seriousness, and 



[1-7] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

discovered that he had made false conclusions in the realm 
of religion from physical scientific premises. v He came back 
to belief in God with a complete mental seriousness and 
candor, having realized that he had been altogether too 
dogmatic outside his scientific sphere. The story of his in- 
tellectual struggle is revealed in the book, "Thoughts on 
Religion," edited by Bishop Gore. 

Do I know the meaning of mental seriousness as a principle 
in living? Am I willing to see this matter of doubt through 
in the spirit of seriousness? 

First Week, Seventh Day: Moral Seriousness 

And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up, and 
said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down; for 
to-day I must abide at thy house. And he made haste, and 
came down, and received him joyfully. And when they 
saw it, they all murmured, saying, He is gone in to lodge 
with a man that is a sinner. And Zacchaeus stood, and said 
unto the Lord, Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give 
to the poor; and if I have wrongfully exacted aught of any 
man, I restore fourfold. And Jesus said unto him, To-day 
is salvation come to this house, forasmuch as he also is a 
son of Abraham. For the Son of man came to seek and to 
save that which was lost. — Luke 19: 5-10. 

We mean here by moral seriousness the constant willing- 
ness to follow light at any price — to be ready, if need be, 
to decide and act immediately. Jacob was morally serious 
when he went forward to meet Esau. Great literature reveals 
supreme moments in which men create a crisis through 
heroically breaking away from accumulations of unreality 
in their lives. A man may crowd the moral reality of years 
into an hour of decision. In that courageous hour the fog 
is dispelled from the mental outlook, and new enthusiasms 
stir the soul. Many have become conscious of God through 
immediate obedience to light without coquetting with conse- 
quences. 

Let us remember there is a mental seriousness which is 
not always associated with moral seriousness. They ought 
to go together. Because such is not invariably the case, it 
is disappointing in life sometimes to find mental ability asso- 
ciated with moral cowardice, the result being that the mental 
vision is narrowed. For what we see depends a great deal 

6 



SEEKING GOD [I-c] 

on our own readiness to put everything we have into the 
game of life. 

Where moral seriousness exists the mind is not only seri- 
ous — it is reverent, and teachable. And reverence gives dis- 
tinction and penetration to the intellect. Let us therefore 
seek God with our whole personality, and in this attitude we 
shall see farthest. 

Can we do this? 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 



Let us try to follow the road along which a thoughtful 
person of the twentieth century sometimes travels to a belief 
in God. And let us bear in mind, while it may not be the 
way by which we have come, it is not an imaginary path. 
While the facts may not all have come out of one experience, 
they are still facts from life. 

First of all then, this person for some time previously had 
been shedding his former belief. It may be that his mind had 
been overloaded in earlier years with a lot of things which 
he accepted implicitly as all equally necessary to a real faith. 
As a student of the thought of his time, he had been quietly 
dropping one after another of those ideas ; and he was 
tempted to think that since so much was unnecessary, or 
absolutely false, therefore everything must go. That is the 
way in a panic, whether it is in the realm of ideas or in 
finance. So his reading, the movement of his mind, his 
mental environment, tended to urge him to sell out practically 
all his religious beliefs and to sell very cheaply. Many people 
do this ; they feel uncertain, then proceed to let everything 
go. * However, this man called a halt. He found he could 
not go on long without some grip upon the universe of which 
he was a part. 

In the second place, he had become keenly aware of deeper 
needs in his life. He was possessed by a depressing solitude 
of spirit. A certain sense of aimlessness haunted his efforts 
— a tragic consciousness of dissatisfaction — a poignant feel- 
ing of personal unworthiness, and of inability to help others 
in their nobler longings. All these gave him not only a new 
mental seriousness, but a new impatience with an attitude 
of mere doubting. The needs of his life must get him some- 

7 



[I-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

where beyond doubting. He found that the road to belief in 
God had very real difficulties, but also that unbelief as an 
alternative was far worse. And there the battle was fought 
for a time, back and forth like the ebb and flow of a tide. 

Third, he gradually discovered that the deepened sense 
of need in his life had powerfully affected his mental outlook. 
That outlook became greatly changed from the time in which 
he merely played with the intellectual aspect of religious 
problems. He found that the mere intellectualist was only 
half a man, because the man who was living merely in the 
domain of thought, and not also of life, could not see truth 
accurately or proportionately. His moral needs had auto- 
matically affected his mental processes. He realized that his 
mental outlook was like looking through a telescope — it had 
several lenses, and it had various possible focuses — and that 
these conditions were determined by elements in personality 
deeper than thought; that what one's eyes saw was according 
to the quality and condition, the number and focus of the 
lenses of the telescope through which one mentally looked. 

As the sense of the deepest needs of his life grew, the 
focus of his intellectual perceptions had changed, and changed 
very greatly, and changed very quietly. The change in mental 
outlook was not wrought by discussion, but by a change of 
focus in the elements of his being. So that he fell on this 
important discovery — that the condition of his entire per- 
sonality profoundly and unconsciously affected his mental 
vision, and that in order to get the highest knowledge on 
the highest realities in the universe he must live as well as 
think. He must live heroically as well as think heroically. 
He must be reverent as well as daring. In this temper he 
realized that his former mere intellectuality was itself lacking 
in reasonableness because it faced a problem for which it 
had not the ability. He had tried to study the constellations 
with only one lens in his telescope. 

II 

But now, seeking anew for God with the earnest purpose 
of his whole personality, he found in the world outside of' 
himself, first of all, that sane men and women testified to 
knowing God, and to knowing Him in the most vivid zone 
of their consciousness. And, like Descartes, they could not 

8 



SEEKING GOD [I-c] 

get away from trusting the reliability of their consciousness. 
He saw that history was human experience crystallized, and 
that human experience testified to the sense of God being 
;a supreme human fact. He realized also that history is re- 
lated to human experience as physical science is related to 
the facts of the world, and that therefore the message of 
history must be listened to in this matter. And when a 
scientific mind like the late William James gathered the 
testimony of God-conscious men and women into his book 
on "Varieties of Religious Experience,' , he felt that he was 
face to face with facts as real as those which a physical 
scientist gathered from nature. 

Second, as his own moral sense of need grezv more vivid, 
he became profoundly azvare of the presence of a moral 
obligation within hint. He was conscious of being in the 
grasp of an obligation to be, and to do, and not to do, which 
drew him out beyond himself, beyond society, to a Presence. 
And that was not only his own experience. As a student 
of life and literature he found that great literature depicted 
men who were deeply conscious of moral obligations as 
reaching out into the unseen for solace, help, forgiveness. 
Those who have been the true prophets in literature have 
invariably interpreted the human sense of moral obligation 
as the movement of the human spirit towards its moral 
creator. They have depicted the intuitive human search for 
God as personality seeking personality, as moral need crying 
out for the source of its satisfaction and renewal. 

"It is from the intense consciousness of our own real exist- 
ence as persons that the conception of reality takes its rise 
in our minds. It is through that consciousness alone that we 
can raise ourselves to the faintest image of the supreme 
reality of God," says Mansel in his third Bampton Lecture. 

Further, this seeker for God also saw that "the heavens 
declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his 
handiwork." He not only found his own moral nature lead- 
ing him out to the moral creator of it, but he saw that his 
own power of reasoning could understand the mind which 
is expressed in the laws of the physical world, and that 
consequently the rationality in himself and in nature must 
have a common origin behind nature. The mind that can 
see mind in the phenomena of nature demands mind as 
the first cause of both. Like Kepler sweeping the heavens 



[I-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

with his telescope, he could say of God, "I am thinking Thy 
thoughts after Thee." It was idle to say that evolution ex- 
plained all, for evolution is only a method of doing things. 
Evolution is only a secondary cause, but a second cause is 
not an answer to the instinctive human quest for a First 
Cause. And it does not matter how far in time you spread 
out secondary causes, the mind goes back of them all for 
a primary cause that is sufficient for such rational effects. 
When the rationality that is in man is able to read the ration- 
ality that is in nature, as one reads a book, it points to a 
rationality behind both. And when that is taken in conjunc- 
tion with the moral nature, and instinct, and experience of 
man, the ultimate reality behind all phenomena becomes inter- 
pretable as God. 

At last there came to our inquiring friend a personal sure- 
ness of God — not, indeed, a knowledge of God as he is, but 
a certain awareness of God which is, and ever has been, 
possible for those who seek after him. In the nature of the 
case, he could not know much concerning him, through the 
venture of the finite seeking to comprehend the infinite. But 
he was sure that there is a God. He was conscious of a 
moral presence, and that is much. It is the difference between 
light and darkness. It is the difference between hope and 
despair. That is much, but it is not enough. Just as in this 
world 'the sun proclaims the time of day, yet in order to live 
in the world as we find it, in order to meet its demands and 
engagements,, we are dependent upon instruments which bring 
down the time with exactness to meet our needs, so while 
it is a glorious fact to know that there is a God, we are 
dependent upon God's revelation of himself in order to get 
the knowledge and help of God into our finite lives and to 
get our bearings in our human and divine relations. That 
is just what many lack. They believe in God. They are in 
a real sense sure of God, but the message of the Infinite has 
not yet been translated to the needs of their hearts. The man 
who has come to believe in God has much. But he has not 
all that he needs. He has not a sufficient message for his 
own life or for other lives. He may have ideals, and try 
hard to live up to them. He has a sense of God, and a 
reverent readiness to do His will as far as he sees it. But 
he has a feeling that there is still much more divine light, 
and warmth, and power that should be his. This is where. 

10 



SEEKING GOD [I-c] 

very many people stand religiously. They believe in God 
and are trying to be true to him. They struggle on bravely 
with great questions unanswered, deep needs unsatisfied, and 
large opportunities unused. They are genuine men and 
women and have a sense of God. But their knowledge is 
not clear, full, rich ; it does not reach and answer the funda- 
mental cravings of the human heart. It is like the beginnings 
of the recognition of electricity, or of wireless communica- 
tion. It is vague, uncertain. There is something there, men 
say. But it has not yet been definitely brought into the 
service of humanity. Benjamin Franklin with his kite recog- 
nizing the fact of electricity is one thing; the lighting, heat- 
ing, and driving of factories by electricity is another thing. 
So there is an elemental knowledge of God and that knowl- 
edge which springs from taking advantage of the highest 
revelation of him. 



CHAPTER II 



Recognizing the Highest Light 
upon God 

DAILY READINGS 

Second Week, First Day : The Insufficiency of the 
Independent Search for God 

Should not the multitude of words be answered? 
And should a man full of talk be justified? 
Should thy boastings make men hold their peace? 
And when thou mockest, shall no man make thee 

ashamed? 
For thou sayest, My doctrine is pure, 
And I am clean in thine eyes. 
But O that God would speak, 
And open his lips against thee, 

And that he would show thee the secrets of wisdom! 
For he is manifold in understanding. 
Know therefore that God exacteth of thee less than thine 

iniquity deserveth. 
Canst thou by searching find out God? 
Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? — 

Job ii : 2-7. # 

Suppose an electrical inventor were to assume to ignore 
I all that has taken place in electrical invention, he could not 
go far in his work for the practical benefit of the world. 
Suppose an architect were to ignore all the great architectural 
movements, he could not be of the highest service. The man 
who refused to use roads because they were old, and inglori- 
ous battles had been fought upon them, insisting upon making 
his own roads, would not have sufficient reason for his 
originality. And in religion men must take account of the 
fact that God has been revealing himself, and such revelation 
is in answer to human need. The history of religion cannot 

12 



THE HIGHEST LIGHT [II-2] 

be ignored, especially the highest expressions of it, where 
it definitely professes to meet the fundamental needs of 
human nature. A man therefore takes his own guesses far 
more seriously in this respect than he dare in literature or 
invention or science, if he ignores the historical story of reli- 
gion, and ventures to evolve his own. I suspect this is the 
position which Mr. H. G. Wells has taken in his brilliant and 
candid book, "God the Invisible King." But I also suspect 
that if Mr. Wells had not unconsciously borrowed from the' 
Christian consciousness of his time, it would not have been 
so easy for him to clothe his cc Finite God ,} with the qualities 
with which he endows hint. Even while he may repudiate 
the religious findings of the world about him, he cannot 
psychologically get away from making them part of the 
framework for his new venture. Can we dispense with the 
recognition of progress in any field, and especially in that 
one which deals with the highest equipment of character? 

Second Week, Second Day: God Revealed Himself 

Because that which is known of God is manifest in them; 
for God manifested it unto them. For the invisible things 
of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, 
being perceived through the things that are made, even 
his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be with- 
out excuse. — Rom. 1 : 19, 20. 

"Two things there are," said Kant, "that fill me with awe — 
the starry heavens above me, and the moral law within me."' 
Since the First Cause of the universe is a rational and moral 
personality, then he must express his life according to the 
content of his being. Every living thing expresses itself. 
Life means self-expression. And in manifesting himself he 
must necessarily ever completely transcend all the expressions 
of himself. Principal Cairo insisted that pantheism deified 
the finite world, for it locked God into his world ; while 
deism locked God out of his world, and, as Professor Seth 
observed, has thereby made God finite, "a more or less orna- 
mental appendage in the scheme of things." That God is 
above his world is proclaimed by the highest historical reli- 
gious sense, while his presence in the world is inevitable 
from the very fact of his transcendence. His universe is the 
expression of him. There is a progressive movement in the 

13 



tII-3] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

self-revelation of God. He has revealed himself in nature 
and in human nature. And we cannot get the niessage from 
God for man except as we put the emphasis upon the message 
that comes through man. 

'-'No longer half akin to brute, 

For all we thought and loved and did, 
And hoped, and suffer'd, is but seed 
Of what in them is flower and fruit; 

Whereof the man, that with me trod 

This planet was a noble type, 

Appearing ere the times were ripe, 
That friend of mine who lives in God, 

That God which ever lives and loves, 

One God, one law, one element, 

And one far-off divine event 
To which the whole creation moves." 

— Tennyson : "In Memoriam." 

Second Week, Third Day: God Revealed Himself 
According to Human Capacity 

Now there was a certain man in Caesarea, Cornelius by 
name, a centurion of the band called the Italian band, a 
devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, 
who gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God 
always. He saw in a vision openly, as it were about the 
ninth hour of the day, an angel of God coming in unto him, 
and saying to him, Cornelius. And he, fastening his eyes 
upon him, and being affrighted, said, What is it, Lord? 
And he said unto him, Thy prayers and thine alms are 
gone up for a memorial before God. And now send men to 
Joppa, and fetch one Simon, who is surnamed Peter: he 
lodgeth with one Simon a tanner, whose house is by the 
sea side. — Acts 10: 1-6. 

We sometimes hear an intelligent person say, "One religion 
is as good as another religion, at least for the people who. 
are brought up in it." Of course, I cannot agree. And that 
person would not carry out his idea in things outside of 
religion. He believes in sending a better sanitary system, and 
modern agricultural implements, and scientific medicine, to 
the Oriental countries. Why? Because these things answer 

14 



THE HIGHEST LIGHT [II-4] 

their needs better than the things they have been using for 
a thousand years. Our race apparently has a genius for that 
sort of thing, and we should give the needs of the world 
the benefit of it. Exactly. And in the same way, one race 
and many individuals in it have had a genius for sensing 
the revelations of God, , like attuned receivers of wireless 
messages. And those messages are what individuals and 
races need. They do not realize it to be the thing they need, 
not at first, any more than a town in inland China may realize 
at first the need for scientific sanitation, even while it suffers 
from a smallpox epidemic. The superiority of one religion 
over another lies in the measure in which contains the larger, 
fuller message of God to the fundamental needs of mankind. 
Is any less than the best good enough? Are we prepared to 
receive the highest light without prejudice, and are we also 
willing to communicate it? 

Second Week, Fourth Day: God Revealed Down 
Through the Centuries 

And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto 
the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God 
of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say 
to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? 
And God said unto Moses, I am that I am: and he said, 
Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I am hath 
sent me unto you. And God said moreover unto Moses, 
Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, Jehovah, 
the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of 
Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is 
my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all gener- 
ations. Go, and gather the elders of Israel together, and 
say unto them, Jehovah, the God of your fathers, the God 
of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, hath appeared unto 
me, saying, I have surely visited you, and seen that which 
is done to you in Egypt. — Ex. 3: 13-16. 

The counterpart of the story of man seeking God is the 
story of God revealing himself to man. We cannot ignore 
the story of that revelation of God any more than we can 
ignore the story of the progress of anything else as it reaches 
up to the needs of mankind at this moment. Who would 
try to begin the story of English literature or of art all 
over again? There may have been blunders and failures in 

15 



[II-5] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

those stories, but we ignore the blunders and make use of 
the highest achievements. Everything in the world of today 
that is helping man has a more or less long history of failure 
and success, and we enter into the fruits of the toil and 
experience of those who have brought printing, lighting, food, 
machinery, and thousands of other things right up to date 
for our immediate human needs. We cannot make the knowl- 
edge of God an exception to this reasonable procedure, God 
has been revealing himself to men through the ages. And 
that story is of immense value in the living of life. There 
have been false ideas incorporated into the progressive revela- 
tions, but that does not make the truth ineffective. 

You will find a mixture of error and truth in geography, 
physiology, and in every other department of thought. It 
simply demonstrates that it takes time for men to comprehend 
things as they are. And therefore the revelation of God to 
human need is a long story gradually unfolded to the compre- 
hension of the times. Have we responded to the progressive 
divine revelation, or are we living religiously in a former 
age, while we live in other things in the twentieth century? 



Second Week, Fifth Day : The Supreme Revelation 

God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the 
prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at 
the end of these days spoken unto us in his Son, whom he 
appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made 
the worlds; who being the effulgence of his glory, and the 
very image of his substance, and upholding all things by 
the word of his power, when he had made purification of 
sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high; 
having become by so much better than the angels, as he 
hath inherited a more excellent name than they. — Heb. 

If God has been progressively revealing himself, then we 
look for a highest revelation. There are supreme examples 
in painting, literature, architecture, and in every other human 
pursuit. No man can be interested in English literature and 
ignore Shakespeare. There must be a supreme revelation of 
God, and whoever is interested in knowing God must be in- 
terested in the supreme revelation of him. And it is of far 

16 



THE HIGHEST LIGHT [11-6] 

more consequence that we should be interested in the supreme 
revelation of God than in any other subject, because it has 
to do with the living of life. It is a part of the whole 
question of the highest fulfilment of our destiny. We owe 
this interest not only to ourselves, but to our family relation- 
ships, to our associations with the world, to our tasks in life. 
It is not merely a question of our own mood toward the 
subject. It is a question of relating ourselves to the highest 
God has revealed in order to be at our best to our fellow men. 
Our concern to bring our best contribution to the life of a 
changing world, is vitally connected with a definite interest 
in the supreme revelation of God to man. Why is the "good" 
called "the enemy of the best"? Do we live in the spirit of 
desiring the highest? 

Second Week, Sixth Day: Who Is the Supreme 
Revelation of God? 

Now when Jesus came into the parts of Caesarea Philippi, 
he asked his disciples, saying, Who do men say that the 
Son of man is? And they said, Some say John the Baptist; 
some, Elijah; and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. 
He saith unto them, But who say ye that I am? And 
Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the 
Son of the living God. — Matt. 16: 13-16. 

If that question were put to the wisest, the best, and the 
most useful, as well as to the great masses of the people, 
there would be an almost unanimous answer. As the supreme 
revelation of God, Jesus Christ has no competitor, according 
to the judgment of the most diverse and opposite types of 
men. Jesus Christ as a supreme revelation is definitely and 
vividly before the minds of vast numbers of people as the 
highest, clearest vision of the character of God, and as the 
ideal of human character. 

Some writers, like J. M. Robertson and Drews, venture to 
doubt that Jesus Christ ever existed. But such men do not 
fac§ the fact that the portrait of Jesus could not have been 
drawn out ef the human imagination by the combined skill, 
or genius, of the entire first or second century. They also 
evacJi the fact that a great movement like the Christian Church 
Gould spring only from a supreme personality, not to say a 

17 



[11-7] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

single word about the historicity of the Christian records. 
Jesus Christ is ineffaceably before the human mind. He is 
part of the consciousness of the world. What is it in Jesus 
which so completely compels such homage? 

Second Week, Seventh Day : Why is Jesus Christ 
the Supreme Revelation o£ God? 

Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and 
I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of 
me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find 
rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden 
is light. — Matt, n: 28-30. 

Jesus Christ is the supreme revelation of God. Not because 
it is dogmatically asserted that he is, but because he answers 
the fundamental needs of human nature. He professes to 
do this, and multitudes have testified that he has done it. 
What are the fundamental needs of human nature? Here 
are some of them: (1) A satisfying vision of God. (2) A 
sense of divine forgiveness. (3) Divine companionship and 
guidance in daily living. (4) Power in order to turn the 
antagonistic facts of life into personal victorious strength 
and progress. (5) A motive in the living of life which 
shall be sufficient to guarantee personal growth, industrious 
enterprise, consistent with the rights of others and the prog- 
ress of the world. (6) A hope for the future which recon- 
ciles the human spirit to supreme trial in the present, bringing 
the inspiration of the eternal into the duties of the passing 
hour. (7) A program for the renewal of ' the world, the 
renewal of the spirit of the individual being the means of 
social cohesion. (8) All of these, not merely any one of them 
alone, but together "focused in a divine presence, and com- 
municated to lives, not academically, but by the impartation 
of a new spirit. 

These are some of the fundamental needs of human nature 
arrived at by an appeal to experience. And where experience 
has not been wholly successful in appropriating what Christ. 
has to give, there is the intuitive sense that it is from no 
lack of sufficiency in Christ. It is that conviction which 
makes hopefulness for the life of tomorrow possible. Do 
you recognize any really fundamental human need which 
Christ does not answer? 

18 






THE HIGHEST LIGHT [II-c] 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 



I have before me a number of written statements from 
students regarding Jesus Christ as the supreme revelation 
of God. These statements are honest difficulties. But every- 
one of them deals with something which is not essential to 
the heart of the matter. They are difficulties arising largely 
out of centuries of interpretation, and created by confusion 
of mind regarding emphasis upon one point or another which 
is not vital to the problem. Keeping in mind the points 
raised by those students, let me try to face a few central 
questions. I cannot possibly even begin to answer them in 
the space at my disposal, but will merely try to indicate a 
way of approach to the personality of our Lord. 

In what way may we comprehend Jesus Christ as divine? 

(i) He was divine in the absolute completeness of the 
identification of his mind with the mind of God, of his heart 
with the love of God, and of his will with the will of God. 
He revealed God on the human plane. He focused the 
essence of the character of God in human life. 

(2) He was divine in the absolute completeness of his 
identification with fundamental human need. He interpreted 
the human spirit in its depths. He reached beneath the racial, 
the geographical, the sexual, the superficial, and the accidental 
differences, and answered the universal and abiding cravings 
of human nature. 

(3) He was divine in that he conquered every obstacle that 
stood in the way of his bringing the sufficiency of God to the 
willing and responsive human heart. He brought the love, 
the holiness, the forgiveness, and the power of God right up 
to the threshold of individual need. 

(4) He was divine in that he survived physical death, and 
his living spirit became the creative center of Christian 
character. Men and women who had known him before his 
physical death continued to know him in a far deeper and 
more effective way as a spiritual presence. We cannot get 
away from this fact. If Jesus Christ as an actual, spiritual, 
personal Presence had not continued to be real to his fol- 
lowers after his physical death, there would have been no 
Christianity as an historical fact in the world. The spiritual 
presence of Jesus Christ was as real to those early disciples 

I0 - 



[II-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

as anything else in the world. That is not a theory, it is an 
indisputable fact in human experience, verified from the 
profound sureness of sane men and women of the abiding 
Presence. 

II 

What is the heart of Christianity? What is the point of 
contact betzveen Christianity and human need? Is it the 
sermon on the mount, or is it Jesus' view of God, or is it 
Jesus as an ideal, or is it the acceptance of a certain state- 
ment of belief regarding Jesus, or is it something else? Let 
us fasten upon this, for we are at a point that must be 
clearly understood. A great deal of confusion arises just 
here. Is our relation to Jesus Christ that of a traveler to an 
actual guide and companion? What is the heart of Chris- 
tianity? Who is to be the judge as to the true answer to 
this question? It seems to me this is not a question as to 
what you think or what I think. The question should be 
answered by an appeal to the history of Christian experience. 
When we turn to the first followers of Christ, we find that 
the heart of Christianity for them consisted in an actual 
relationship to the spiritual presence of their Master who had 
survived death. Their Christianity was primarily a deep 
spiritual fellowship with a Master who had passed beyond 
physical limitations to a spiritual leadership which transcended 
space. And they actually knew him far better, and they knew 
his aims and purposes far better, in their purely spiritual 
relationship to him, than they did in the days of his flesh. 
This is historical fact, pure and simple. For suppose that 
Jesus after his death had not become an actual spiritual pres- 
ence to those early disciples, what would have happened? 
There would have been no New Testament, there would have 
been no Christian Church. The followers of Jesus would 
have gone away back to their fishing and their other occupa- 
tions, with hallowed memories in their disillusioned lives. 
It was the dominating presence of the Spirit of Christ renew- 
ing th^ir lives, giving them new spiritual experiences, out of 
which the literature of the Testament was born. Without 
the creative presence of the living Christ energizing and 
illumining willing men, the story of the sermon on the mount, 
the teaching of Jesus, the incidents of his human career would 
never have been recorded, Christianity did not exist as an 

2Q 



THE HIGHEST LIGHT [II-c] 

experience and a testimony, as a church, and as a literature 
until the spiritual presence of Jesus Christ mastered and 
illumined the lives ol his disciples. This was not merely 
the view of any one apostle, it was the supreme fact behind 
the full sweep of apostolic life and work. The centrality of 
the living Spirit of Christ has been the supreme secret in 
the lives of saints, martyrs, and missionaries. It has been 
the triumphant fact in hymns and devotional literature which 
have been the inspiration of the Church for centuries. So 
that the heart of Christianity in the light of history is the 
spiritual presence of Jesus Christ. The Jesus of history has 
fulfilled the conditions and has won the place of the spiritual 
leadership of the human race. We are accustomed to the 
idea of those who win places of leadership in every depart- 
ment of corporate enterprise, and we approach the various 
situations of life through those leaders. We are glad to 
recognize them and give them honor and to meet their de- 
mands. Lo, God has exalted Jesus Christ to be the Living 
Mediator in bringing God to man and in bringing man to God. 

Ill 

Where must one begin in seeking to know Jesus Christ? 
One does not necessarily begin by accepting, by believing, all 
that a mature Christian may believe. It seems to me a great 
injury has been done to many people by forcing upon their, 
acceptance much that may be true enough, and necessary 
enough, later on. But to insist upon it as necessary at the 
beginning of the Christian life does incalculable harm. If 
nature moves upwards from the simple to the complex, why 
should it not be so in the natural history of Christian belief? 
If Jesus said: "I have many things to say unto you, but ye 
cannot bear them now," may we not say it? It is surely 
common sense that one who has been following Christ for 
twenty or thirty years believes more than one who is just 
starting. And therefore when a mature Christian tries to 
point the way to a seeker, he will not insist upon the seeker's 
accepting as necessary all that an experienced disciple be- 
lieves. It is because this principle has not been sufficiently 
recognized that there are so many heart-breaking difficulties 
in the minds of large numbers of people in regard to Chris- 
tian belief. 

21 



[II-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

Christian truth is not all on the same level of immediate 
importance. Christianity has primary truth, and truth which 
is the outgrowth of primary truth. It is not necessary to 
accept this secondary truth, before it has become real to you 
through the acceptance and growth of primary truth. There 
is one central creative reality in Christianity. And from 
association with the living spirit of Christ, who is that 
creative center, other Christian truths spring, as apples grow 
on a healthy apple tree. But some have been told they must 
have the apples on the. tree even before the blossoms have 
had time to appear, which is very discouraging. 

But have we definitely tried to find a way of approach to 
Jesus Christ, and are we continuing? 



22 



CHAPTER III 

How is Christ Made Real to Us? 

DAILY READINGS 

Third Week, First Day: The Testimony of the 
New Testament Regarding Jesus Christ 

Ye search the scriptures, because ye think that in them 
ye have eternal life; and these are they which bear witness 
of me; and ye will not come to me, that ye may have life. 
—John 5: 39, 40. 

We all feel that we know certain characters because we 
have read of them. That is all we know of some great souls 
whose personalities haunt us. We read and reread the 
story of their lives, and we know them better than some 
people we meet every day. The New Testament reveals to 
us the personality of Jesus Christ. One among many differ- 
ences between the New Testament and other biographies is 
that while other books cla^e with the physical death of their 
heroes, the New Testament continues the story of the activity 
and enterprise, through the lives of men, of the Spirit of 
Jesus Christ after his physical death. It is unfortunate that 
when some people read the New Testament for a view of 
Christ they become involved in discussion over some detail 
in the story and lose sight of the presence behind the story. 
Of course, there is a real place for criticism. But is it not 
greatly overdone? I went to an art exhibition on one occa- 
sion with a very brilliant artist, and his art criticism was so 
keen and interesting and incessant that my imagination did 
not get much opportunity to receive the message of the pic- 
tures. The New Testament is a portrait of a supreme per- 
sonality. It is a hint, a clue, a suggestion, a revelation. 
Therefore, it is the impression it gives as a whole with which 
we are concerned in the first instance. The New Testament 
in detail presents problems hard to solve. But there is enough 

23 



fIII-2] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

of a general impression of Christ as a person to lead us on 
from the portrait in the Scriptures to him who is greater than 
the portrait. If we wish to get a vivid view of a picture, 
we do not stand too close to it. We do not look at the 
brush work with a microscope. The artistic judge who 
awards the prize may have to do that, but it is not the task 
of the plain man. Sterne says in "Tristram Shandy": 

"And how did Garrick speak the soliloquy last night? — Oh, 
against all rule, my Lord, — most ungrammatically ! betwixt 
the substantive and the adjective, which should agree together 
in number, case, and gender, he made a breach thus, — stop- 
ping, as if the point wanted settling; — and betwixt the nomi- 
native case, which your lordship knows should govern the 
verb, he suspended his voice in the epilogue a dozen times 
three seconds and three fifths by a stop-watch, my Lord, each 
time. — Admirable grammarian ! — But in suspending his voice 
— was the sense suspended likewise? Did no expression of 
attitude or countenance fill up the chasm? — Was the eye 
silent? Did you narrowly look? — I looked only at the stop- 
watch, my Lord. — Excellent observer I" 

In our relation to the New Testament are we merely critical 
or are we looking for a presence? Have we ever given the 
Jesus of the gospels a real chance to make his own impres- 
sion upon us? 

Third Week, Second Day: The Testimony of 
Christians Regarding Jesus Christ 

That which was from the beginning, that which we have 
heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which 
we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word 
of life (and the life was manifested, and we have seen, and 
bear witness, and declare unto you the life, the eternal life, 
which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us) ; 
that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you 
also, that ye also may have fellowship with us: yea, and 
our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus 
Christ.— I John i : 1-3. 

The testimony of straightforward men as witnesses has 
always had a powerful influence with an honest jury. The 
frank statement of a witness has many a time smashed the 
sophistries of an attorney. And it is upon the witness that 

24 



HOW IS CHRIST MADE REAL TO US? [III-3] 

Christ has always rested his case. "Ye are my witnesses." 
Some of the most exalted souls who ever lived on this planet, 
some of the most intellectually acute, some of the most ex- 
perienced in life, some of the most radically changed, have 
borne their witness that they actually knew Jesus Christ. 
They testified not merely to their belief that he once lived 
on the earth, or that they accepted his teaching, but they 
affirmed that his real presence changed their lives — that he 
was their comrade on the open road. This declaration has 
come not only from men and women of the first century, 
but from transfigured lives through all the centuries from 
that day to this. And this testimony has issued from the 
most hallowed hours and scenes. It has been uttered in the 
midst of life's supreme trials. It has been whispered in 
farewells. It has leapt from the souls of men who had been 
broken, and restored by the healing presence. It has been 
the secret of tens of thousands of romantic sacrifices. It 
has been the conviction expressed by strong fathers when 
lads have gone out from home to fight the great fight. Let 
us not forget that this message from historical Christian 
experience is one of the great facts in the life of the world, 
even at this present moment. As Browning declares : 

"That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, 
Or decomposes but to recompose, 
Become my universe that feels and knows." 

What is the peculiar value of such testimony? 

Third Week, Third Day : Jesus Christ Made Real 
Through Lives Which Suggest Him 

Now when they beheld the boldness of Peter and John, 
and had perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant 
men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, 
that they had been with Jesus. And seeing the man that 
was healed standing with them, they could say nothing 
against it. — Acts 4: 13, 14. 

There are few influences which act more powerfully upon 
the human personality than suggestion. It rouses the will. 
It inspires emotion. The sight of his country's flag in a 
foreign land stirs the soul of a homesick traveler. Suggestion 
led the imagination of Newton up to the idea of universal 

25 



[III-4] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

gravitation. It is not only the inspiration of science, it is 
the soul of art. 

In the same way, those who have known Jesus Christ and 
have entered into companionship with him, unconsciously 

• suggest him to others. Something that has come from 

• Christ shining through a character suggests the living Master. 
It may be a very small thing, nothing more than a look, a 
tone of voice, or it may be the atmosphere which a person 
carries. It may be the shining of some grace like patience, 
or humility, or sacrifice, or purity, or courage. And the effect 
of seeing it is to drive the mind to Jesus Christ. I saw a 
man once for a few minutes more than twenty years ago 
and I never think of him but Christ looms up behind the 
vision of that man. The actual visible form of Christ behind 
the. figure of Phillips Brooks on Copley Square in Boston 
may not appeal to us. But the idea is sound. I am sure that 
very many people came to believe in the actual spiritual 
presence of the Master through the personality, not to speak 
of the preaching, of Phillips Brooks. I have heard more 
than one man confess that his faith in Christ was retained 
■through periods of storm and stress by the divine suggestive- 
ness of a parent's life. Have we given the suggestion of 
Christ through human lives the place in our life which we 
give the suggestion of other things? 

Third Week, Fourth Day: Christ Made Real 
Through Personal Test 

And they come to Jericho: and as he went out from 
Jericho, with his disciples and a great multitude, the son 
of Timaeus, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the 
way side. And when he heard that it was Jesus the Naza- 
rene, he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou son of 
David, have mercy on me. And many rebuked him, that 
he should hold his peace : but he cried out the more a great 
deal, Thou son of David, have mercy on me. And 
Jesus stood still, and said, Call ye him. And they call the 
blind man, saying unto him, Be of good cheer: rise, he 
calleth thee. And he, casting away his garment, sprang 
up, and came to Jesus. And Jesus answered him, and said, 
What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? And the blind 
man said unto him, Rabboni, that I may receive my sight. 
And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; thy faith hath made 

26 



HOW IS CHRIST MADE REAL TO US! [III-5] 

thee whole. And straightway he received his sight, and 
followed him in the way. — Mark 10: 46-52. 

This blind man had heard of Jesus, but of course had never 
seen him. He had enough evidence, however, from others 
to put Jesus to the test, with the result that the testimony 
of others was changed into a personal experience which veri- 
fied the testimony as true. 

We are constantly putting reports regarding people and 
things to the proof by a personal venture. It is the way we 
live, it is the way of progress. If we did not do this, we 
would never make any new friends, we would not expand 
our relationships with anything. Our world would become 
smaller,, and not larger. A great deal of testimony is not 
necessary in order to try out something for ourselves.- When 
some one tells us of another person he thinks can help us 
in some perplexity, the testimony may be very slender md 
unsatisfactory, but we say : "Let us try and see what comes 
of it." After that venture we give our opinion of the worth 
of the testimony. 

In the same way, there is first of all a testimony regarding 
Christ, then there is a personal experience of him. Testimony 
is a temporary basis for faith, while personal experience is 
the permanent basis for faith. 

There are two questions for us to answer to our own satis- 
faction. The first question is-; "Is there enough testimony 
regarding Jesus Christ to put him to the proof?" The second 
question is : "Is my need sore enough to compel me to make 
the experiment?" 

Third Week, Fifth Day: Christ Made Real 
Through the Eclipse of Other Things 

Martha therefore said unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been 
here, my brother had not died. And even now I know that, 
whatsoever thou shalt ask of God, God will give thee. 
Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again. Martha 
saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resur- 
rection at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the 
resurrection, and the life: he that believeth on me, though 
he die, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and be- 
lieveth on me shall never die. Believest thou this? She 
saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I have believed that thou art 

27 



'[III-6] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

the Christ, the Son of God, even he that cometh into the 
world. — John n: 21-27. 

While living in Lausanne for a brief period some year's ago, 
I found that in the glorious view from my window there were 
villages on the French side of the Lake of Geneva nestling 
at the foot of the Savoy. Mountains, which I could see only 
on dull days. In the bright sunshine they were invisible. 
So there are dark days in human experience in which the 
presence of Christ becomes marvelously real. We sometimes 
hear in these tragic days severely academic philosophers say 
that through stern concrete facts they are seeing realities 
never comprehended by study. 

I have known a brilliant agnostic who, passing through a 
certain experience, suddenly realized Jesus Christ as a pres- 
ence with a simplicity and clearness that reminded me at once 
of the experience of Saul of Tarsus. 

Life is a great revealer. It readjusts our emphasis. It 
gives a new proportion to the intellect in its relation to the 
rest of personality. It suffuses the mind with a new light 
from the deeper elements of our being. Some things which 
had stood in the foreground of our concern and ambition 
are suddenly thrown into the shade without any discussion. 
Nobody had spoken, there was no argument, but the whole 
scene of life was changed and rearranged. Things that had 
been terribly real became almost unreal, while a Presence 
that had been unreal became a glorious and dominating and 
comforting reality. At what times in my life has Jesus 
Christ seemed most real to me? 

Third Week, Sixth Day: Christ Made Real 
Through Concern for Others 

And behold, there came a man named Jairus, and he was 
a ruler of the synagogue : and he fell down at Jesus' feet, 
and besought him to come into his house; for he had an 
only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she was 
dying. But as he went the multitudes thronged him. — 
Luke 8: 41, 42. 

Have you ever observed how some men change and soften 
in their religious attitude when the spiritual needs of their 
children begin to grip them? They had perhaps no definite 

28 



HOW IS CHRIST MADE REAL TO US? [III-7I 

sense of need for themselves, but the questions, the problems, 
the longings, of helpless young lives looking to them for help, 
stung them into seriousness. 

They could not drag those eager children through the argu- 
ments by which they had been led from confusion to con- 
fusion in the days of their early twenties. "There was a 
good deal of feverish unreality about it all," I have heard 
more than one of this type of man say, with a reminiscent 
look in the eyes. And since that time, life has been teaching 
them some things. It is in some such circumstances I can see 
a sobered man of thirty-five reading the story of Jesus, and 
then awkwardly kneeling down with his little family in the 
honest longing to have the Presence enlighten and protect 
that precious charge committed to his manly care. 

I am not here making light of the days of youthful doubt, 
but would simply remind that lovable, eager youth of twenty 
with whom I have a profound sympathy, that there are other 
influences upon spiritual understanding besides discussion, 
that will some day have their place in his thoughts. When 
I am called upon to help others, what have I to give? 

Third Week, Seventh Day : Christ Made Real 
Through Dispelling False Impressions 

And Nathanael said unto him, Can any good thing come 
out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see. 
Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, 
Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile! Nathan- 
ael saith unto him, Whence knowest thou me? Jesus 
answered and said unto him, Before Philip called thee, 
when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee. Nathanael 
answered him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art 
King of Israel. — John 1 : 46-49. 

Nathanael heard a remarkable testimony in favor of Jesus, 
but he was strongly inclined to reject it instantly. The rea- 
son for this was the temptation to look at Jesus through the 
bad reputation of the town in which he lived. 

The impulse in the mind of Nathanael was to cancel the 
testimony of a good man regarding Jesus through holding 
on to a popular prejudice. It was only as he listened to 
persuasion to get behind the unsavory reputation of Nazareth, 

2Q 



[III-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

and to look squarely at Jesus as he was in Himself that the 
light broke upon his mind. 

This is perhaps the supreme difficulty on the part of very 
many in our day. They are prejudiced by real or imaginary 
facts which stand between them and Jesus Christ. There is 
a tissue of preconceived false notions, of misrepresentations, 
of caricatures, obscuring the Master's presence. 

The problem is to get behind those misleading associations, 
which are no more a part of Christ than the particles of dust 
are part of the sunbeam in which they dance. The sunbeam 
does not create the dust, nor can the dust contaminate the 
sunbeam. 

So the soul of real Christianity is Christ, and Christ is not 
coextensive with all that is called Christian civilization, or 
with conventional Christianity. It is the privilege of those 
who have a definite experience of Christ to lead seekers 
beyond Nazareth to the Creative Presence. How can we 
clear our minds of false ideas 'of Jesus Christ? 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 



The face of Christ is eclipsed for some by actual concrete 
historical facts which have produced prejudices. There are 
prejudices against the reality of Christ which have been in- 
spired, by inconsistent professing Christians and by wrangling 
Christian churches. The failure 'of organized Christianity to 
wipe out vice, drunkenness, and strife of all kinds from the 
life of Christendom has been damaging. Some practical 
critics judge Christ by what has issued out from professed 
association with him into the stream of corporate human life 
during these so-called Christian centuries. 

The facts which inspire this prejudice are terribly true. 
But Christ is not to blame for them. It is a first principle 
in the activity of Christ that he must have the cooperation 
of the individual and corporate will. He cannot compel indi- 
viduals to do his will. He will not, he cannot coerce men. 
For it is his purpose to develop souls and not to make mere 
chattels. Those who really know Christ, and know them- 
selves, do not blame him for their failures. They have a deep 
conviction that all their shortcomings have arisen through 
their own indolence, cowardice, or hypocrisy. They know 

30 



HOW IS CHRIST MADE REAL TO US? [III-c] 

that whenever they rise to his challenge, his power and pur- 
pose cooperate with their willingness to achieve victory in 
life. In regard to the corporate failure of Christianity, there 
never has been a real and lasting large corporate historical 
opportunity given to Jesus Christ in the Christian centuries 
to unfold his program for the coming of the Kingdom of 
God. 

Somehow or other, as early as the sub-apostolic period, 
corporate Christianity began to receive a serious twist; it 
failed to carry out its original pattern and spirit and power. 
There were great souls and there were great movements. 
But the original corporate pattern was tampered with. The 
Reformation, with all its great emphasis upon forgotten 
truth, did not recover the whole range of the Christian order 
of things. The Protestant Reformation was a protest. It 
could not in the nature of the case grasp the entire situation 
and readjust it. It was a partial movement, and the trouble 
with much of Protestantism since then has been to make 
a fetish of that partial movement, instead of a starting point 
for a comprehensive and persistent progressive recovery of 
the real mind of Christ for the individual and the whole of 
society. 

The condition of the modern world is a challenge to indi- 
viduals and to the churches, to give Christ a fresh chance 
to live through them, to embody his program. Christ still 
has the power, he still has "the plan for the coming of the 
Kingdom of God on earth, when we as individuals and 
churches will cease to think self and begin to think Christ 
and to will his will. It is that conviction which makes the 
thought of the future not only tolerable, but hopeful, for 
perhaps we are learning our lesson through our disillusions. 
We Christians say to the critics who have a prejudice against 
Christ because of the awful state of the world — it is not 
Christ's fault. It is the fault of the arrogance, the stupidity, 
the self-centered provincialism of individuals and Christian 
communities. "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? 
Come and see." . 

II 

There are prejudices against the reality of Jesus Christ be- 
cause of intellectual statements concerning his personality, 
through which some think they must approach him, and they 

31 



TIII-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

Cannot do it. There are men who are embarrassed by defini- 
tions, and who are alienated by a dogmatism which is alto- 
gether foreign to the experience and teaching of the men of 
the New Testament. 

When we notice how the men of the New Testament handled 
the difficulties of seekers regarding their Lord, we realize that 
many of us are entirely on the wrong track. When Philip 
dealt with Nathanael, he immediately appealed to personal 
experience. 

None of the New Testament characters made Jesus Christ 
their master out of a definition regarding him. Their devo- 
tion was always the result of a personal venture of faith, a 
personal intimacy. There is of course a place for definition, 
there is a place for credal statements — it may be a great 
place. But the present point is that we have no right dog- 
matically to thrust a credal statement upon any man as a 
preliminary necessity. It is not in the New Testament. It 
is not in the experience of the men who wrote the New 
Testament. The credal statement was and is the outgrowth 
of experience and not the creator of experience. A creed 
is for the mature and not for the immature. If you tell a 
sick man that you believe a certain physician can perform a 
complete cure, but that he must try the experiment for him- 
self, you are not dogmatically demanding the acceptance of 
a creed regarding the doctor, you are simply urging a personal 
trial of him. Besides, a personal trial is a far more vital 
thing than the mere inactive assent to what other people 
have said, arid then doing nothing more about it. 

The testimony of the Bible, and of its great Christians, is 
all directed towards getting men not primarily to accept a 
creed, but to make a venture. When the venture has been 
made is time for the creed. And then that personal permanent 
living creed comes out of the soul's experience. 

Therefore, apart from definitions, apart from all the differ- 
ent places of emphasis upon which one and another insist 
in the historical record of the human history of Jesus Christ, 
there is enough to put him to the proof. . There is enough 
general evidence to make a particular venture. And after 
the venture one may go back and vindicate the historical 
record, having some real experience with which to do it. I 
am strongly convinced that this is the New Testament atti- 
tude. 

32 



HOW IS CHRIST MADE REAL TO US? [III-c] 

In taking up a different attitude, we play into the hands 
of mere scholasticism, which tends to drag the whole ques- 
tion out of the realm of a personal venture and to leave it in 
the realm of academic discussion, for which most people 
have neither the ability, nor the time, nor the inclination. 
Hence the indifference of some to the whole matter. 

/ am convinced further that the men of the New Testament 
were concerned in the first instance only with getting their 
fellozmnen into a personal relation with the living Christ, 
and not with the great truths which grew out of association 
zvith Christ. They made a clear difference between the truth 
that went before a Christian experience and the truth that 
flamed from it. 

Unfortunately in our day a great many people have no such 
clear understanding of the Christian situation. They insist 
upon putting all Christian truth on the same level, to be 
accepted by the same person all at once, and if the seeker 
hesitates he is immediately under suspicion. That is not 
only cruel, it is treason to the way of the New Testament. 
In the New Testament there is only one central, creative 
reality and that is the living presence of Christ. All the 
teaching of the Epistles is an outgrowth. To insist that a 
man shall show his apple harvest when he is just planting 
his apple trees is both nonsense and tyranny. Our real 
creed is not made for us beforehand, it is made by the victory 
of the divine life working in us and through us. 

Ill 

There is another attitude which threatens the permanent 
estrangement of some from the living personality' of Christ. 
Like the first disciples o"i Christ, on the evening of that first 
Good Friday, they think of him as dead and buried. 

There are people who think that historical biblical criticism 
and an evolutionary process in the world have made a living 
Saviour impossible. They are sorry, but their faith has had 
to go. They loved that glorious vision in the days of their 
childish simplicity and credulity, but it has been done to 
death since by the learning of the world, of which they have 
absorbed a little here and there. They are not at all aggres- 
sive, they are quiet, hesitant, detached. They rarely speak 
of it, and when they do they are not harsh. Some of them 

33 



[III-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

are most lovable men. Their, tragic mistake is that they 
think learning has buried a Presence. They might be right, 
if belief were wholly dependent upon mere academic demon- 
stration. But that is not even good science. For science 
begins with facts and not with theories. Scientific theories 
are evolved from the facts of nature. And so there are also 
Christian facts. Unfortunately they are not as plentiful as 
they should be, and that is the real trouble. But after all, a 
scientist does not require a great many specimens in nature 
to compel his mind. Even a very rare specimen is a fact, 
and that one rare specimen may throw down a previous pet 
scientific theory. 

So in Christian things our appeal is from the merely 
academic to life — from the Jesus that men say was dead, to 
the Christ whom men say is alive. And history carries the 
proof of it in transfigured characters. Christian life is a 
fact. Behind the fact there is testimony to a Presence, and 
without that Presence there is no adequate explanation of 
the fact. If the transfigured Christian characters were only 
more transfigured! If there were only more of them! If 
they were only a mightier cohesive, redeeming, social power — 
then there would be more who would believe, there is no 
doubt about it. For even scientific minds are impressed 
with power and bulk, and chilled by feebleness and fewness. 
The supreme means, then, of convincing men of all kinds 
must be the reality of the Presence triumphing in and through 
lives, and in and through their social opportunities. Till that 
day comes when Jesus Christ shall have a greater chance 
in our lives and our churches and our social institutions, we 
appeal to what he has had a chance to do. We appeal to 
what he has done in some. We appeal to the testimony of 
those who know his power. We appeal for a venture from 
the merely academic temper to life, from theory to testimony, 
and from testimony to a personal test of the living Christ. 
There are scientific men in all departments of science who 
know the scientific situation and who are at the same time 
Christian believers. They live with Christ in the full light 
of scientific statement. And they do it because they are 
students of Christian facts as well as of theories. 



34 



CHAPTER IV 

What was Jesus Christ to His 
First Followers? 

DAILY READINGS 

Fourth Week, First Day : They Saw God Focused 

Take heed lest there shall be any one that maketh spoil 
of you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the 
tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not 
after Christ: for in him dwelleth all the fulness of the God- 
head bodily, and in him ye are made full, who is the head 
of all principality and power.— Col. 2: 8-10. 

You focus the sun's rays through a magnifying glass and 
start a fire. The contents of a vast library are focused into 
a catalogue. The policy of a nation is focused through the 
personality of an ambassador. Jesus Christ revealed God 
in a human focus. Men saw in him enough of God for their 
need. They were satisfied. There was no sense of the inade- 
quacy of Christ. The inadequacy was in their power of 
searching the depths of the revelation that was in him. 

This is what students of comparative religion as well as 
simple disciples of Christ discover in our day — that Christ 
gathers the broken, scattered revelations of God into a 
focused unity in himself. It is not that other religions are 
wholly false, it is simply that Christ makes a full-orbed, all- 
inclusive revelation of God, sufficient for human need. As 
a mattter of historical fact, every other revelation of God 
since has either been an echo, a dilution, or a perversion of 
that which is in Christ. And when we have the daylight we 
are independent of lesser lights. # 

Do we seek God where he is focused or where it is more 
difficult to find him? 

35 



[IV-2] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

Fourth Week, Second Day: They Saw God 
Simplified 

Even the mystery which hath been hid for ages and 
generations : but now hath it been manifested to his saints, 
to whom God was pleased to make known what is the 
riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, 
which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. — Col. i : 26, 27. 

The humble disciples of Christ actually knew more about 
God through Christ than Plato knew. I am not here dis- 
paraging intellectual inquiry. I am simply stating a fact. 
Because a child in an express train travels faster than a 
champion runner on foot, that is no reflection upon the 
runner. So the disciples achieved more knowledge concern- 
ing God than was possessed by any type of independent 
speculative philosopher. There are one or two remarkable 
glimpses of God in Aristotle, but there is no such adequate 
knowledge of God for the various aspects of life as the men 
of the New Testament possessed. Plato was far more blind 
to the sacrificial idea in life than were the disciples of Christ. 
The revelation of God that is in Christ comes down to 
ordinary human comprehension. This race for divine knowl- 
edge is not to the intellectually swift. It is true at this hour 
that the man who knows Christ has an actual practical knowl- 
edge by which to live, that all the purely intellectual study 
of a lifetime could not give him. While some brilliant men 
are intellectually stumbling amidst the darkness of a tem- 
pestuous night, there are far less gifted men walking confi- 
dently amidst divine realities to the conquest of life, realizing 
the expansion of their triumphant souls. 

Do we live in that mental temper which can receive the 
simplified revelation of God? 

Fourth Week, Third Day: They Saw God as 
Humanly Available 

For through him we both have our access in one Spirit 
unto the Father, So then ye are no more strangers and . 
sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints, and 
of the household of God, being built upon the foundation 
of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being 
the chief corner stone; in whom each several building, 
fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the 

36 



CHRIST AND HIS FIRST FOLLOWERS [IV-4] 

Lord; in whom ye also are builded together for a habita- 
tion of God in the Spirit. — Eph. 2: 18-22. 

Many who believe in the immanence of God, in the actual 
presence of God everywhere, are at the same time unable 
to make actual connections with God. Just so at Niagara 
one may stand by the vast cataract and yet, in the presence 
of so much water, be unable to quench actual thirst. There 
may be power in the stream close by your house, but it is 
not available as electricity to give you light until the engineer 
sets up a transforming apparatus. 

Through Jesus Christ, his disciples were immediately con- 
scious of being brought into definite relations with the heart 
of God. They knew God as a Father. This knowledge is 
deeper than the recognition of God as the Creator of the 
universe, or as immanent in this world. It is a knowledge 
born of experience and of the very essence of reality. It is 
more than intellectual knowledge, and it saves the intellect 
from being drowned in the depths of mystery which intellect 
cannot fully fathom. This knowledge of God through Christ 
does not solve the mysteries of the universe, but it transcends 
them. There is a sense of having entered into a toving 
relationship with God as the soul of the universe, which is 
the heart of reality. There is a sense of being at home in 
the universe, notwithstanding its mysteries. There is a sense 
of kinship with the center of spiritual reality. And conse- 
quently there is a patient willingness to wait for light upon 
whatever seems to contradict trust in God. 

While we recognize the nearness of God are we able to 
enter into relationship with him? 

Fourth Week, Fourth Day: They Experienced 
God Within 

For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 
When Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested, then 
shall ye also with him be manifested in glory. 

Put to death therefore your members which are upon 
the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and 
covetousness, which is idolatry. — Col. 3: 3-5 

It is one thing to admire a presence that is entirely outside 
of one's own life — it is quite a different thing to be possessed, 

37 



[IV-5] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

controlled, inspired, by the spirit of that presence. It is one 
thing to follow a guide who leads along the difficult, gloomy, 
uphill path. It is another thing to be inwardly possessed by 
a wooing, compelling presence whose spirit turns the hard 
road into romance and triumph. 

So there was a time when the early followers of Christ 
simply admired him, but there was another time when the 
living Spirit of Christ lived within them. He ruled their 
hearts. His life became the life of their lives. When Jesus 
was physically with them, they followed him as a Master. 
When he was physically absent and spiritually present, he 
lived within them. They knew him far more intimately 
when he was spiritually with them than when he was physi- 
cally with them. Therefore we say that Christ revealing God 
within men by his indwelling presence is normal, apostolic, 
historical Christianity. Christ as a spiritual presence within 
human lives, illumining, restraining, inspiring them, is the 
very heart of Christianity. It is this relationship between 
Christ and his followers that has made real Christianity. 
What has not been of this living, inner relationship could 
never by itself survive as Christianity. 

Is our knowledge of God an inner spiritual experience or 
is it merely a mental assent? 

Fourth Week, Fifth Day: They Experienced 
Forgiveness 

The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew, 
hanging him on a tree. Him did God exalt with his right 
hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance to 
Israel, and remission of sins. And we are witnesses of 
these things; and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God hath 
given to them that obey him. — Acts 5 : 30-32. 

The followers of Christ believed that when he forgave them 
their sins they were free from guilt in the face of the whole 
universe. They were unafraid to live or die. They feared 
God, but they were not afraid of him. This sense of forgive-, 
ness did not deaden their conscience. It gave them a new- 
moral sensitiveness. It was not a substitute for character, 
it was a fresh start in the pursuit of character. Unforgiven, 
they would have been morally broken and paralyzed men. 
Forgiven, they were possessed by a new zest for life. And 

38 



CHRIST AND HIS FIRST FOLLOWERS [IV-6] 

this experience has been verified in the lives of multitudes 
in our own time of the best men made better and of the worst 
men transformed. There is nothing in this life of which 
they have been surer than their moral renewal through the 
forgiveness of Christ. 

Where in all human experience is there any such escape 
from moral failure into triumphant moral achievement as 
in the lives of those who bear witness to having accepted 
forgiveness from Christ? There is no story of moral restora- 
tion, of renewed enthusiasm, of recovered joy, of fresh 
conscious oneness with the will of God, and of humble contri- 
tion, in the whole of human literature which compares with 
the testimony of a believing Christian. Into what new day 
does Shakespeare bring Lady Macbeth? What does Victor 
Hugo do for Jean Valjean? Where does Hawthorne leave 
Arthur Dimmesdale? 

Can anything take the place of the divine forgiveness in 
our lives ? 

Fourth Week, Sixth Day: They Possessed Power 

And he hath said unto me, My grace is sufficient for 
thee: for my power is made perfect in weakness. Most 
gladly therefore will I rather glory in my weaknesses, that 
the power of Christ may rest upon me. Wherefore I take 
pleasure in weaknesses, in injuries, in necessities, in perse- 
cutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake: for when I am 
weak, then am I strong. — II Cor. 12: 9, 10. 

The sign of power is that things happen. Things happened 
in and through the lives of the disciples of Christ. Read 
through the book of Acts with the idea in your mind of 
things happening, and you will be conscious of the energy 
of a new epoch in the life of the world. Even in reading 
about it, one becomes aware of being lifted into a higher 
spiritual realm, as a boat high and dry is floated by a rising 
tide. 

What does it mean? It means that Christ-consciousness 
in those men's lives made them aware of great tasks and 
of great resources in achieving them. They were not so 
much conscious of power as conscious of Christ. Christ 
expressed himself through them as urging certain things to 
be done, with his spiritual capital behind the doing of it. 

39 



[IV-7] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

Those men knew that a command from Christ implied the 
ability to achieve it as hidden in the heart of the command. 
Triumph came not through self-consciousness, but through 
Christ-consciousness. 

If Croesus asks you to do some expensive task for him, 
it is not your pocket book that is behind it, but his. And in 
the doing of it you do not think of your resources but his. 

Is our Christianity primarily a task or power to achieve it? 

Fourth Week, Seventh Day : They Found a Center 
for Social Unity and Progress 

And when the day of Pentecost was now come, they 
were all together in one place. And suddenly there came 
from heaven a sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind, 
and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And 
there appeared unto them tongues parting asunder, like as 
of fire; and it sat upon each one of them. And they were 
all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with 
other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. — Acts 
2: 1-4. 

Through their Master the disciples not only found their 
own highest destiny as individuals, but they entered upon the 
beginnings of a new social center of unity and progress. 
The most potent bond was established between them, issuing 
from a profound common relation to Christ. Think of all 
the ties which have united groups of people, and consider if 
there ever was one w T hich had the unifying elements of that 
comradeship : They had a living Leader in the deepest things 
of life. They rejoiced in a personal experience of those 
deepest things. They enjoyed a definite spiritual fellowship 
in those greatest of realities. They were comforted and sus- 
tained by a common outlook upon life. They were inspired 
towards the same ideal in service. They were united in the 
expectation of a coming Kingdom. 

Of course, without the actual spiritual experience this bond 
simply does not exist, however impressively the outward form 
of it may be set up. Everything depends upon the reality of 
the inner condition. But where the spiritual regeneration 
has taken place, there is the seed plot of a social order, there 
is the hope for a new humanity. Are we making a vital 
contribution to such possibilities ? 

40 



CHRIST AND HIS FIRST FOLLOWERS [IV-cI 
COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 



The followers of Jesus aid not enter upon their penetrating 
knowledge of him all at once. There was a gradual recogni- 
tion of him. They began their discipleship, some of them, 
as with a teacher to whom they had been introduced, perhaps 
with a determination not to be carried away by enthusiastic 
reports. Just so, many a great friendship begins in the most 
casual way, with no immediate promise of rich and far-reach- 
ing results. 

But the appeal of his personality, plus their willingness to 
be open-minded and open-hearted to his influence, brought 
a great treasure of conviction regarding him. Even while 
he was still in the flesh, they had followed clues and hints 
that led them to awe-inspiring conclusions. It would be 
difficult to divide up into its various shades of color the 
beam of light which fell upon their souls from his presence. 
There were so many elements in it. It was the mixture of 
so much that was beyond their knowledge or dreams, issuing 
out from him as a conquering spiritual illumination, as a 
renewing atmosphere, as a compelling revelation. And when 
he became invisible, when his presence was wholly spiritual, 
there came to them a sudden increase of unearthly light upon 
him as to who he was and what he was. There was born in 
them a sense of deathless spiritual nearness and of kinship. 
They saw their Lord in luminous cosmic relationships to God 
and to the world. There flashed in upon them a dazzling 
knowledge of Jesus Christ, which swept away all hesitations, 
misgivings, and paralyzing fears. They had become normal, 
dynamic, militant Christians. 

As such, Christ had for them the value of God. They 
were not concerned about knowing more about God. They 
did not speculate as to God outside of his revelation in Christ. 
They had in Christ a sufficient relation to the universe. The 
full range of their need was compassed. They were complete 
in him. Their vision was filled and held by the personal 
relation to Christ. He had from the beginning of his asso- 
ciation with them insisted upon a definite personal relation. 
"Jesus knows no more, sacred task than to point men to his 
own person," says Hermann. There was no apology for his 
astounding demands, made in the midst of the humblest 

41 



[IV-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

circumstances, and with the lowliest bearing. The light and 
shade in him were of the intensest extremes. The most 
menial service was joined with the most commanding au- 
thority. There were no explanations, and no compromises. 
And men responded to his expectation. They read the signa- 
ture of God all over him. He asked the very first place in 
their lives, expected it, obtained it, and when it was given 
he was not surprised. And there was no material pageantry 
behind him to allure men to surrender to him — no magic of 
fashion to compel — no imperial purple to awe. 

It was all the other way. But God moved out upon men 
through a personality who focused the eternal in time, caught 
up into himself the claims of God upon man, presented those 
claims, and established himself as the Lord of life. 

We are here at the heart of historical Christianity. To 
quote Professor H. Mackintosh : "When once the Gospel has 
been severed from an historic person and identified with a 
complex of metaphysical ideas, what it ought to be called 
is scarcely worth discussion ; that it is no longer Christianity 
is clear." 

II 

Astronomical observation has an authoritative relation to 
the watch in your pocket, over the town clock, and to watches 
and town clocks everywhere. So the charter members of 
Christianity looked upon Christ as their supreme authority. 

They were conscious that he had "the sovereign right to 
exercise moral compulsion" towards them. It was not the 
compulsion which came out of an argument, for Christ did 
not argue with them. It was a distinctly moral compulsion, 
which struck them in their moral being ; they were sure it 
came from God. They were convinced that there was no 
higher court of appeal from this authority. When Jesus 
charged them, commanded them, communed with them, they 
believed that the soul of God was moving upon their souls. 
That authority in Christ became more real to them as they 
responded to it, and in responding to it they recognized that, 
since his authority came from the heart of God, it must 
move out through them toward the circumference of human 
society. 

The seat of authority in religion for them, therefore, rose 
from the Old Testament Scriptures to their Lord. For they 

42 



CHRIST AND HIS FIRST FOLLOWERS [IV-c] 

had experiences which were beyond those Scriptures, and the 
New Testament was not yet written. With every possible 
veneration for the Old Testament, it could not be said that 
the pioneer Christians found their ultimate authority there, 
«for their life and testimony and task went beyond the Old 
Testament. It is quite true they found in the Scriptures a 
testimony concerning their supreme authority. "Search the 
Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and these 
are they which testify of me" 

The seat of authority in religion for them was not to be 
found in a church. For they had outgrown their original 
Jewish Church, while the new Christian Church had hardly 
been formed. 

Nor was their religious authority mere subjective' illumina- 
tion. For they had not sufficient inner light until they were 
cleansed and regenerated by a Presence greater than their 
own native illumination. 

Their authority was Christ, not as a definition, not as a 
system of doctrine — not his teaching, but his presence; not 
merely as Christ touched the intellect, but as he sounded the 
depths of personality where they longed most of all for a 
divine authority to grip them, heal them, and reassure them. 

Ill 

I have seen a group of houses built on land to which, I 
understood, the owners had no title. The houses are no doubt 
comfortable and the families who occupy them happy, but 
some day they may find themselves dispossessed. The 
"squatter" is all right only for the time being. So we hear 
a good deal in our day about one's own inner experiences 
as being his authority in religion. And that may be all well 
enough if the experience is something more than mere exalta- 
tion of feeling, if it has some real authority. But that sort 
of thing may have no higher source than physical or psychical 
exuberance. A mere mood is a dangerous thing. Feeling 
happy is a very comfortable experience. But it proves little, 
it settles nothing. There are several modern cults built upon 
comfortable psychology. But unfortunately they, do not face 
the ultimate issues of life. They simply urge ignoring the 
disagreeable, as the ostrich buries its head in the sand in order . 
to be out of sight. 

43 



[IV-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

There are all kinds of merely psychological experiences 
which thrive upon ignoring moral reality. But this is an 
ethical universe and a valid religious experience must be 
consistent with such a universe. Christ comes upon the soul 
in the full light of an ethical universe. He deals with the* 
ethical problems within man. With ethical consistency he 
takes the torment out of the human conscience. 

That is what he did for his apostles. And they were vividly 
conscious that God in Christ had done all that was necessary 
in the moral universe to make their moral regeneration possi- 
ble. Simon Peter had sinned. Saul of Tarsus had sinned. 
They all had sinned. And whoever was brought back from 
sin into normal relations with God, with the unseen moral 
universe, 'could come only as it was morally right that they 
should come. Was it right that Simon Peter, Saul of Tarsus, 
and the rest of them should be so brought back? 

That was a problem in the unseen moral world. They 
could not fathom it. But they gazed upon it wistfully, rever- 
ently, contritely. They believed that God dealt with that 
problem. They had a profound conviction that they saw 
hints, clues, flashes of unearthly light upon that problem, 
through the human life and passion of Jesus Christ. 

They remembered words of Christ. They remembered 
mysterious, inscrutable, awe-inspiring actions. They remem- 
bered forever that all these converged in a Cross. And after- 
wards in the thick -darkness great Hashes of light illumined 
that Cross. 

Those men knew they were forgiven. Their forgiveness 
was not an emotional outburst. It was a moral readjustment 
with a moral universe. They were at one with God, and all 
that God stood for. Whatever problem was involved in the 
transcendent fact of making human moral recovery an actual 
experience, God had dealt with it. For in Christ they had 
experienced it. They knew this with the same consciousness 
that they knew everything else, only it was keener, more 
vivid, than other facts of which they were conscious. This 
stood out memorable, unforgettable. And what did it matter 
what they had to eat and wear? What did it matter whether 
men counted them successes or failures? They were at one 
with God and his universe, for the Spirit of Christ was within 
them, bringing them into accord with the will of God for 
themselves and for the whole world. 

44 



CHAPTER V 

Some Obstacles in the Way of 
Knowing Christ 

DAILY READINGS 

Fifth Week, First Day: The Mind Fixed Upon a 
Moral Standard Rather Than Upon Christ 

According to the riches of his grace which he made to 
abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, making 
known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his 
good pleasure which he purposed in him unto a dispensa- 
tion of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in 
Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the 
earth; in him, I say, in whom also we were made a herit- 
age, having been foreordained according to the purpose of 
him who worketh all things after the counsel of his will; 
to the end that we should be unto the praise of his glory, 
we who had before hoped in Christ: in whom ye also, hav- 
ing heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salva- 
tion, — in whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with 
the Holy Spirit of promise. — Eph. i: 7-13. 

A woman called upon a poor widow with money to help 
pay her rent. The widow did not answer the knock at the 
door because she thought it was the owner of the house for 
the overdue money. This is the attitude of some minds 
towards Christ. They look upon him as a moral landlord 
and they have not yet scraped together the moral coin which 
he demands. They will answer his knock at the door when 
they have reached a certain stage of moral excellence. But 
they never seem to be able to reach it. They are trying hard. 
Their thoughts oscillate between the requirements of an ideal, 
and a keen sense of shortcoming in relation to it. The thing 
immediately visualized is the moral ideal with a demand, 

45 






[V-2] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

instead of the Presence with help. The mind is burdened 
with the thought of a moral mortgage, rather than inspired 
and heartened by the vision of a Presence with an endowment. 

Thus Christ as the helper of the soul is shut out of the 
thoughts in the meantime. There are brief glimpses of the 
gracious mission of Christ to the soul, but the emphasis of 
the mind is not focused clearly and steadily upon his liberat- 
ing and life-giving presence. 

Shall we fix our attention upon law or upon grace as re- 
vealed in Christ? 

Fifth Week, Second Day: The Mind Centering 
Upon Personal Failure Instead of Upon Christ 

For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: 
but I see a different law in my members, warring against 
the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under 
the law of sin ,which is in my members. Wretched man 
that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this 
death? — Rom. 7: 22-24. 

Penitence is a very blessed condition of soul. But when 
penitence turns the mind in upon oneself in an attitude of 
introspection, of discouraged brooding, of merciless self- 
accusation, then we see the vice of a virtue. Suppose a child 
has an injured hand of which he is so painfully conscious 
that he will, not allow a physician to touch it — he is simply 
making things worse. So penitence carried to the point of 
thinking exclusively of one's failures or sins, or of one's 
general unworthiness, does not lead anywhere except to 
despair. There are many people living in this attitude of 
mind. They think that they must continue to increase its 
intensity. And they are distressed because they cannot make 
themselves feel the pain of even greater anguish. It is just 
here some plunge right back into carelessness and sin. They 
have an idea that they cannot meet the penitential terms of 
Christ, and in sheer discouragement they give it all up. 

That is remorse. Remorse is penitence turned in upon 
oneself, plunging amidst the darkness of one's own sense of 
failure. Real penitence, on the other hand, turns the mind 
outwards towards lesus Christ. Judas Iscariot was a victim 
of remorse. Simon Peter learned to be a true penitent, for 

46 



OBSTACLES TO KNOWING CHRIST [V-3] 

he would not surrender to despair and he sought the for- 
giving presence of his Master. 

Is our penitence leading us anywhere, or arc we merely in 
an attitude of chronic regret f 

Fifth Week, Third Day: Christ Eclipsed by Occu- 
pation with Good Work 

But Martha was cumbered about much serving; and she 
came up to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that 
my sister did leave me to serve alone? bid her therefore 
that she help me. But the Lord answered and said unto 
her, Martha, Martha, thou art anxious and troubled about 
many things: but one thing is needful: for Mary hath 
chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from 
her. — Luke 10: 40-42. 

Every practical person has a good deal of sympathy with 
Martha. And there is a sense in which service is the 
essence of devotion to Christ. At the same time we all know 
the possibility of becoming so engrossed in work as to lose 
sight of the personal relation to Christ. A man may so toil 
for his family as gradually to neglect the personal relation, 
for while his family lives by bread, it does not live by bread 
alone. 

There are many families that would be willing to have less 
bread and more personal fellowship. At any rate, the thing 
that stands between some lives and Christ is complete absorp- 
tion in work of one kind or another. The very unselfishness 
of the occupation tends to increase the subtilty of the tempta- 
tion to make zvork a substitute for personal relationship. 
Self-sacrificing activity takes the place of prayer. Up to a 
point it is right enough, it is plausible enough, and yet $ie 
hour comes when a great mistake is recognized. Or one is 
haunted even in the midst of his noble work by the fear 
that he is making a profound mistake, that after all nothing 
can stand as a complete substitute for a personal spiritual 
relation. For without that the quality of the work is weakened, 
the power and vision in doing it are impaired, and without 
inner spiritual vitality the events of the day do not minister 
to the growth of the soul. 

Is our service the outcome of a personal relationship or a 
substitute for it? 

47 



[V-5I UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

Fifth Week, Fourth Day : Christ Eclipsed by Mak- 
ing Prayer an End in Itself 

And in praying use not vain repetitions, as the Gentiles 
do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much 
speaking. Be not therefore like unto them: for your 
Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye 
ask him. — Matt. 6: 7, 8. 

The habit of prayer is of supreme importance in the spirit- 
ual life if the object towards whom prayer is offered is more 
or less real to him who prays. But is it not possible for one 
to pray to his own prayers — to be taken up with the fact 
that he is praying, that he has prayed so many times or for 
so long a time? If one makes the mistake of substituting 
going to the spring for drinking the water of the spring, he 
is deceiving himself. And if he should think that the oftener 
he goes to the spring the more efficacious it would be, he 
would do himself an injury. This is the attitude of some in 
religion. Christ is eclipsed by the consciousness of praying. 
It is the act of praying that is real to the person. It is the 
act which is looked to for a result. The means is made an 
end. It is as if one were to substitute a key for his house, 
as if he should revel in the fact that he has his key while 
he stands outside of his house in the storm. And if one 
key would not do, he would procure a bunch of keys, and 
insist that now surely he should find escape from the storm. 

Am I conscious of God, or of my prayers? 

Fifth Week, Fifth Day: Christ Eclipsed by 
Thoughts of the Attitude of Others 

While he yet spake, they come from the ruler of the 
synagogue's house, saying, Thy daughter is dead: why 
troublest thou the Teacher any further? But Jesus, not 
heeding the word spoken, saith unto the ruler of the 
synagogue, Fear not, only believe.— Mark 5: 35, 36. 

When some have sought the presence of Christ, they have 
been conscious of a cynical, chilling whisper from the world, 
"What is the use of your trying to interest the Lord in your 
case? It is too hopeless. Trouble not the Master." They 
have become more conscious of that paralyzing suggestion 
than of the Friend of sinners. 

48 



OBSTACLES TO KNOWING CHRIST [V-6] 

I have heard the story of a poor woman living on the 
Balmoral estate who had been invited by Queen Victoria to 
visit her at her castle. The invitation not having been ac- 
cepted, her Majesty asked her friend for the reason. The 
shy answer was given: "I am afraid of the men with the 
brass buttons at the door." So the thought of the world's 
criticism, condemnation, hostility — real or imagined — has rilled 
the mind, instead of the invitation of the Saviour. Many 
a seeker is kept from the knowledge of Christ because he 
cannot put divine love in the front of his mind instead of 
thoughts of the unforgiving spirit of the world. 

Are we mastered by the real attitude of Christ, or by the 
imagined attitude of the world? 

Fifth Week, Sixth Day: Visualizing Jesus Christ 

And he fell upon the earth, and heard a voice saying 
unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he 
said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom 
thou persecutest: but rise, and enter into the city, and it 
shall be told thee what thou must do. — Acts 9: 4-6. 

When we think of our beloved dead we make a mental 
image of them as we knew them on earth. Of course, we all 
know that it is the spirit which survives, and yet we get 
near to the spirit through mental images of physical forms 
that were dear to us. The mental picture of a former physi- 
cal presence conveys, we might say sacramentally, a spiritual 
presence. 

In the same way do we not get near to the living spiritual 
presence of Jesus Christ through mentally visualizing him 
in the light of his human personality? 

It is not that we think of him merely as living in the past, 
but his human past aids us in thinking of him intelligently, 
and spiritually, in the present. And if Christ was the supreme 
human point of contact for men with God he is so still. 

If Christ was a fact, then he continues to be a fact. If the 
essential message and power of his life proceeded from his 
imperishable Spirit, then his living Spirit continues to convey 
that message and power. // Christ claimed a personal, practi- 
cal, supreme, spiritual relation to men once in time, then 
surely that relation is permanent. A spiritual fact is an abid- 
ing reality, in spite of all physical phenomenal changes. 

49 



[V-7] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

Therefore if we admit that Jesus Christ had a personal, 
spiritual relation to men, then we cannot deny that same rela- 
tionship now without doing violence to a spiritual fact. For 
a spiritual fact does not cease to exist, because physical death 
cannot injure it any. more than a sword can cut a sunbeam. 
The sunbeam shines on. 

Fifth Week, Seventh Day: The Nearness of Jesus 
Christ 

And Jesus came to them and spake unto them, saying, 
All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on 
earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the 
nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and 
of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to ob- 
serve all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I 
am with you always, even unto the end of the world. — 
Matt. 28: 20. 

When we think of distance we usually make a mental image 
of so many miles, or yards, or inches. But when we come 
to think of a spiritual presence we must try to get away from 
this physical idea. For physical distance belongs to physical 
things. 

For example, in the mental world there is no such thing 
as geography. The only distance between us and an idea 
is the lack of comprehension, or the lack of desire to compre- 
hend. So the only separation in the spiritual world is the 
lack of spirituality, or the lack of concern for it. Let us 
therefore shut out of our thoughts the idea of physical dis- 
tance when we think of the living Spirit of Jesus Christ. 
This idea has disheartened many a seeker. It is as if one 
were thousands of miles away from help. It has the instinc- 
tive strain and anxiety of a very long-distance telephone 
call for help. It is this idea that has made many sink into 
despair. When we get rid of the conception of physical 
far-away-ness in regard to Jesus Christ, a considerable part 
of our spiritual strain and anxiety vanishes. Just as when 
our loved ones die, some part of our human sorrow consists 
in a sense of far-away-ness which we should try hard to 
eliminate from our thoughts, so in our relation to Jesus 
Christ we must break that cruel spell of spatial separation. 

Let us clearly and definitely eliminate all idea of the physical 

50 



OBSTACLES TO KNOWING CHRIST [V-c] 

from the problem of our relation to Jesus Christ. He is here. 
What is the only barrier that may stand between us and 
Christ? 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 



// Jesus Christ is to become a vivid reality, the mind must 
get rid of everything that turns the thoughts in upon itself. 
It must think outzvards. There are many things which tend 
to hold the attention upon oneself, and not upon Christ. As 
some are kept in the grip of paralyzing depression by think- 
ing exclusively of their failures, there are others held in the 
grip of self-satisfaction by thinking of their excellent achieve- 
ments. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, 
"God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are ... I 
fast twice in the week, I give tithes of ail that I possess." 
Like Saul of Tarsus they assert that they are "as touching 
the law blameless." Their religion tends to become self- 
conscious goodness. They are satisfied and fortified by 
thoughts of themselves. Their standard of moral measure- 
ment is comparison w T ith their neighbors, with a keen sense of 
personal superiority. So long as their self-conscious attitude 
continues there can be no sense of the reality of Christ. A 
self -centered man may often have no sense of what another 
man who is speaking to him is saying, he is so completely 
taken up with his own thoughts and what he wants to say. 
He has no mental receptiveness. That is the attitude of the 
morally self-satisfied in relation to Christ. 

It is astonishing when we are preoccupied how little we 
see. A man may pass a monument almost every day for years 
and not know the inscription upon it. He may not even know 
the name of the famous person it represents. 

I have had more than one man who had passed the statue 
in front of St. Paul's Cathedral in London hundreds of times, 
inaccurately declare it to be a figure representing the late 
Queen Victoria. If we are not interested in certain sections 
of a newspaper, it is amusing how we may cease to be aware 
of the existence of such- news, even when we read the news- 
paper every day. And preoccupation with moral self-satisfac- 
tion may blot out the presence of Christ so that he is a mere 
name amongst a multitude of others. 

5i 



[V-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 



II 

We may eclipse our vision of Christ by having the mind 
taken up with our condition of indifference, or what we con- 
ceive to amount to indifference. We may be tempted to center 
our thoughts not upon our bad selves or our good selves, but 
upon our indifferent selves. 

We judge the inner life to be not sufficiently awake, not 
sufficiently concerned for Christ — so that the thought is with- 
drawn from him to be concentrated upon yet another form of 
inner condition. This time it is moral numbness. It is as if 
when some gracious friend came to see us we should remain 
in our room, cogitating upon how to improve our attitude 
towards him, before we should meet him, whereas common 
sense would teach us that it is in forgetting our attitude, and 
thinking of our friend and his unselfish friendliness, that all 
unconsciously our attitude would be changed. His presence 
would do far more in the way of thawing us out than all our 
isolated introspection could do. Friendships are not made or 
healed by morbid self-analysis in aloofness from our fellows. 
And we are not moving towards the light when we try to 
improve our condition of real or supposed moral numbness, 
lacerating our inner life by self-accusation. We only succeed 
in automatically banishing Christ from our thoughts by such 
unhealthy preoccupation. Large numbers of people are caught 
in this net of inner self-contemplation upon a good, bad, or 
indifferent self, and all such introspective attitudes blot out 
the Presence. You see illustrations of this tendency towards 
self-analysis in "Amiel's Journal" — a certain brilliant self- 
examination which issues into a sense of paralyzing futility. 
You see it in "Hamlet," producing melancholy, inaction, 
dreamy detachment. John Milton, writing a treatise on 
divorce on his wedding trip, reveals an analytical preoccupa- 
tion which tends to chill human relationship. And it is this 
impulse which distills a dense fog, shutting out our glorious 
spiritual relationships. Ignorance of the prevalence of this in- 
trospective attitude among young people in their teens is part 
of the culpable ignorance of large numbers of Christian 
parents. Months, it may be years, of youthful misery caused 
by earnest but misdirected self-analysis ; a beautiful, and 
naturally happy young spirit cowed into chronic depression 
and religious fear through lack of help in the direction of 

52 



OBSTACLES TO KNOWING CHRIST [V-c] 

objective healthy-mindedness — the real situation is often 
never even suspected in many a Christian home. All kinds of 
religious duties and enterprises are zealously carried forward 
in the family life, but there is not even a suspicion that a 
sensitive boy or girl spends half of many a night sleepless, 
worrying over an inner religious condition. And because 
nothing is said about it, or no hint of it is given, it is taken 
for granted that no acute and perplexing problem exists. If 
there is one thing more than another which many a religiously 
interested young person needs, it is to help him to turn his 
thoughts away from himself to the contemplation of Jesus 
Christ as the answer to all his inner need. 

Ill 

There is another hindrance to the clear realization of Christ 
which brings failure to many earnest efforts, namely, the very 
strong tendency to visualise a preconceived notion as to what 
Christ will do in one's life. 

It is a dangerous thing to create a preconceived image as to 
what is going to happen in one's life when Christ enters into 
it, because the mind then centers upon one's own ideas of the 
results of Christ's presence rather than upon that presence. 

Our idea of a reality may be a totally different thing from 
the reality itself. We may lose the reality in pursuing the idea 
of it. The dog lost the bone by biting at the reflection of it in 
the water. Christian biographies are often of the greatest 
spiritual value, and yet sometimes individuals seize upon a 
dramatic, sensational experience in the life of a victorious 
Christian, and conclude that if spiritual experience is to be 
real to them it must come in exactly the same way. That is a 
wrong and misleading conclusion. 

For example, if you ask some who are seeking to know 
Christ what they are expecting, they may quote some highly 
emotional incident from the life of a well-known Christian. 
They will tell you they are waiting for that kind of mystical 
attack to take possession of them. This is the attitude in 
which earnest souls have been known to remain expectantly 
for years. They are wistfully looking for this kind of answer 
to their prayers. Nothing is considered of any real religious 
value until this preconceived vision of mysterious ecstasy takes 
hold of their feelings. 

That is to say, an effect is sought in place of a cause. Emo- 

53 



[V-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

tion is an effect, while the creative cause of inner change is 
the presence of Christ. It is a disheartening attitude to be 
seeking a blessing rather than -the Blesser. But that is the 
chronic, disappointed expectation of earnest seekers who 
never seem to find what they seek. And they never will until 
they turn from all kinds of emotional imaginings and seek 
only to receive the living presence of the Master, without sen- 
sational accompaniments. Effects do not usually manifest 
themselves until the cause has had time to be established. You 
do not see the green sprout rising above the ground from a 
seed the moment it is planted. Besides, while there may be 
emotional results flowing from trust in Christ, such symptoms 
cannot be rested upon, because they come and go. They are 
like glorified clouds in the sky, just as unstable, and as 
fleeting. 

The mind must escape from all thought of the inner conr 
dition, from all thought of what it imagines is going to happen 
in the way of inner changes, and concentrate wholly upon the 
presence of Christ. An invalid may seriously retard his 
physical recovery by having his thoughts constantly centered 
upon his symptoms. Even where they do not exist he will 
succeed in creating them. Almost the supreme task of his 
friends is to get that man's mind away from himself, for there 
can be no progress so long as the patient is poisoning the 
springs of health by black, morbid visions of disease. On the 
other hand, it may be almost as bad for the sick man to have 
preconceived inaccurate images in his mind of the way in 
which symptoms of his recovery will appear. If he thinks 
that, having fulfilled certain conditions, therefore healing must 
be instantly evident or that healing should take a certain pre- 
conceived form, then when it does not happen, he is liable to 
discouragement. And such discouragement will hinder the 
whole process of recovery. The right attitude of his mind 
would be concentrated, invincible trust in the means of re- 
covery and the exclusion of thoughts of morbid condition, and 
also shutting out hasty, inaccurate, mental pictures of the way 
in which the cure is coming. 

It is Christ then who should be the object of our thought, 
and not another person's experience of him, nor a precon- 
ceived notion of what our experience should be, nor the re- 
currence of the symptoms of a former experience which we 
once had, however real it may have been at that time. 

54 



CHAPTER VI 

The Thoughts in Relation to 
Christ 

DAILY READINGS 

Sixth Week, First Day : The Place of Thought in 
Our Relation to Christ 

Looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our 
faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the 
cross, despising shame, and hath sat down at the right 
hand of the throne of God. For consider him that hath 
endured such gainsaying of sinners against himself, that ye 
wax not weary, fainting in your souls. — Heb. 12: 2, 3. 

One may have a large library and little knowledge. He may 
have much stored knowledge, and little actual thought. To 
think upon anything is to have an actual, present, immediate 
contact with it. "Thought is the seed of action." Thought of 
Christ is our point of contact with him. Our thoughts express, 
or may express, the other elements of our personality in the 
act of contemplation. 

But so many thoughts never arrive at their destination; they 
are waylaid, they are sidetracked, confused. We have tried to 
indicate some of the things that do this mischievous work, so 
that we may be able to permit our thoughts actually to rest 
upon Christ. Here is the very heart's secret of the relation- 
ship, actually to make this mental connection — clearly, calmly, 
deliberately, to stay the mind upon him. 

Have we given this act its true place in our Christian life? 
Is it not true that we have often overlooked, minimized, dis- 
honored, the place of thought in the maintaining of relations 
with Christ? Our thought life is like a telephone "central" 
when the soul seeks fellowship with Christ — "central" some- 
times lets other interests in upon the line just as the soul 
begins its interview, or "central" says "the line is busy." And 
so the days go by. 

55 



[VI-2] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

"When our thoughts are born 

Though they be good and humble one should mind 
How they are reared, or some will go astray 
And shame their mother." 

Sixth Week, Second Day: Thinking Upon Christ 
Is More Than Mere Reverie 

But let him ask in faith, nothing doubting: for he that 
doubteth is like the surge of the sea driven by the wind 
and tossed. For let not that man think that he Shall 
receive anything of the Lord; a doubleminded man, un- 
stable in all his ways. — James i : 6-8. 

Locke said that "reverie is, when ideas float in our mind 
without reflection or regard of the understanding." It is not 
an uncommon attitude of the mind in regard to Christ. There 
exists an impression that if the thoughts merely drift tran- 
quilly in an indefinite kind of way towards spiritual reality, 
the end is served. "Watch the changing color of the waves 
that break upon the idle seashore of the mind." And some 
people spend a good deal of valuable time in this condition. 
It may arise from a superstitious opinion that this is religion, 
or it may arise from habitual mental indolence, or it may be 
caused by sheer physical and mental weariness, or it may 
spring from having no clear objective before the groping 
mind. But the point at present is that so far as the spiritual 
life is concerned, muddled, addled thinking is not a guaranteed 
means of grace. The tendency to seek always the point of 
least mental resistance in our devotional life is a definite and 
gross injustice to the deepest within us. It is a failure of the 
mind to do its part in establishing and maintaining relations 
with Christ. And except when w£ are exhausted or perplexed 
it is an insult to him who seeks to convey his wealth of divine 
grace to our personality. Inattention to what a person has to 
say to us is a severe verdict upon our estimate of the value 
of what he has to say. 

Is our spiritual communion mere reverie, or is it clear think- 
ing that has actually made terminal connections ? 

Sixth Week, Third Day: Thinking Upon Christ a 
h Growing Habit of Mental Attention 

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war accord- 

56 



THE THOUGHTS [VI-4] 

ing to the flesh (for the weapons of our warfare are not of 
the flesh, but mighty before God to the casting down of 
strongholds) ; casting down imaginations, and every high 
thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and 
bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of 
Christ. — II Cor. 10: 3-5. 

Spiritual contemplation has a definitely intellectual element, 
and it carries with it a very real intellectual, as well as general, 
culture. For the needs of our deepest life impel the mind 
towards concentration. "The one thing I cannot do is to con- 
centrate in my devotional* exercises y ,, is what one sometimes 
hears. And the plea is offered that one has not the gift for 
that sort of thing. But, as a matter of fact, one can concen- 
trate upon anything in which he is interested. Interest quickly 
guarantees mental attention. Whenever the object upon which 
the mind should rest is clear and interesting, concentration is 
secured. There is really no such thing as a gift for concen- 
tration, it is a gift for being interested, if you like. People 
who may be the most listless in their devotional life may be 
past masters in concentration upon business. 

The ideal mental relation would be for us to make Christ 
-the home of our thought. In this attitude we would certainly 
be redeemed from mental vagrancy. I suppose none of us 
would profess to have attained to this. ,But do not misunder- 
stand the idea — it is not that we should always be thinking 
about Christ. That literally carried out might end in insanity ; 
it certfeinly would be a complete perversion of the purpose. 
All evasion of duty under the pretext of spiritual communion 
will defeat the purposes of Christ in the equipment of human 
life for service. To have a home does not mean that we never 
go outside the door. It should rather imply that we go out 
refreshed, nourished, inspired ; we live under the spell of it, 
and come back to it as to our haven of refuge. 

How is interest in Christ deepened in order to secure con- 
centration upon him? 

Sixth Week, Fourth Day: The Element of Time 
in Relation to Mental Attention Towards Christ 

And he cometh, and findeth them sleeping, and saith 
unto Peter, Simon, sleepest thou? couldest thou not watch 
one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into tempta- 

57 



[VI-51 UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

tion: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. 
And again he went away, and prayed, saying the same 
words. And again he came, and found them sleeping, for 
their eyes were very heavy; and they knew not what to 
answer him. And he cometh the third time, and saith 
unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: it is enough; 
the hour is come; behold, the Son of man is betrayed into 
the hands of sinners. Arise, let us be going: behold, he 
that betrayeth me is at hand. — Mark 14: 37-42. 

There must be definite periods of time given to spiritual 
contemplation, which is another way of saying that Christian 
living must have the principle of method in it. A well ordered 
existence has stated times for its various forms of enter- 
prise. We have times for rest and activity, for food and 
labor. And such arrangement need not make any man the 
slave of method. In any case, one is less a slave in obeying 
a method than in obeying the mere impulse of a mood. Spirit- 
ual failure often has its starting place in substituting a mood 
for a method, so that the contemplation of Christ has thereby 
become a fitful, uncertain, vague experience, weakened and 
starved by other influences ; whereas method, stated times, 
clearly arranged engagements for devotion, tend to tame and 
discipline our wayward moods into reliable habits. 

No man can tell another what time he must give for the 
culture of the friendship of Christ. But there must be stated 
seasons of communion and that will mean sacrifices in keep- 
ing the appointments. It is quite true one may cultivate the 
great friendship apart from those stated times of quiet when 
the door is shut. But the deepening of intimacy with Christ 
rises out of recognized seasons vf meditation and prayer. We 
have fixed hours in which we partake of food, the assimilation 
of which goes on when we, unconscious of the process, are 
engrossed in our daily work. So it is the fixed appointments 
with our Lord which guarantee the assimilation of his mind 
into our being when we are about our Master's business. 

Does your recognition of the time element tend towards the 
merely mechanical? 

Sixth Week, Fifth Day: The Active and Passive 
Aspects of Mental Attention Towards Christ 

And he fell upon the earth, and heard a voice saying 
unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he 

58 



THE THOUGHTS [VI-6I 

said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom 
thou persecutest: but rise, and enter into the city, and it 
shall be told thee what thou must do. — Acts g: 4-6. 

When we engage in a conversation, or when we take up the 
telephone, we usually exercise an active and a passive mental 
attitude. We speak and we listen. And in our relation to 
Christ we exercise both the active and passive aspects of our 
mind. /;/ point of time our spqaking is sometimes first, and 
our listening afterwards. But in point of emphasis, the atti- 
of listening is of primary importance. Why? Because 
Christ has more to communicate than we have. To use a 
variety of Xew Testament metaphors, he is the vine, we are 
the branches. He is the mind, we are the body. He is the 
giver and we are the recipients. He is the leader, we are the 
followers. And if such is our relationship to him, then the 
primary emphasis is upon our mental receptivity. It is of 
greater importance for us to listen to him than for us to talk 
to him. And when we say this, it is surely not belittling our 
active prayer side in the fellowship. The fact is, a great deal 
of vital meaning has been emptied out of the relationship be- 
cause we have sometimes drowned the voice of Christ by con- 
tinuing our talking to him beyond the bounds of reverence. 
We have too often presumed to inform him when we should 
have been humbly listening. We have made speaking an end 
in itself. Have we not said our prayers? is what we some- 
times say to ourselves. 

There are the two aspects, and we would not disparage one 
aspect, while calling for a new recognition of the other. 

In what ways do we fulfil the recognition of the active and 
passive attitudes in spiritual life? 

Sixth Week, Sixth Day: The Passive Attitude in 
Mental Attention Towards Christ 

And while he said these things, there came a cloud, and 
overshadowed them: and they feared as they entered into 
the cloud. And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, 
This is my Son, my chosen: hear ye him. — Luke 9: 34, 35. 

The passive attitude of mind does not imply weakened at- 
tention. The artist in his relation to nature is not inattentive 
because he gives himself up to the message of the landscape. 

59 



[VI-7] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

He is receptive. He has silenced his artistic theories which 
had threatened to rise up and talk, and he listens to the cre- 
ative message. In order to listen successfully we must be free 
from preoccupation. We observe every day that a preoccupied 
man is a poor listener. To be free from preoccupation im- 
plies living in the present. It requires that we shall not men- 
tally chase the next thing, or be under the lash of the last 
thing. Some lives have no real present, it is all past or future. 
They are not free, they are mortgaged either to yesterday or 
to tomorrow. The present for them has simply no vital signifi- 
cance. I am not now thinking of the multitudes of stricken 
children of sorrow when I say this, for many of them live 
heroically in the present far more than do those who are un- 
touched by sorrow. It is in this attitude of passive attention, 
of freedom from preoccupation, that Christ gets his oppor- 
tunity to communicate to us his presence, his grace, his will. 
And it is from this receptive bearing of the mind that active 
fidelity to the mind of Christ springs. 

What are some psychological conditions of freedom from 
mental preoccupation in an attitude of listening f 

Sixth Week, Seventh Day : The Active Attitude in 
Mental Attention 

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, delud- 
ing your own selves. For if any one is a hearer of the 
word and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his 
natural face in a mirror: for he beholdeth himself, and 
goeth away, and straightway forgetteth what manner of 
man he was. But he that looketh into the" perfect law, the 
law of liberty, and so continueth, being not a hearer that 
forgetteth but a doer that worketh, this man shall be 
blessed in his doing. — James i : 22-25. 

Suppose a pupil has put himself under the direction of a 
great artist, what is his active mental attitude towards his 
teacher? Four words practically cover the main aspects of 
that relation — contemplation, inquiry, elimination, and trans- 
lation. (1) The pupil contemplates the personality of his 
master. His mind actively searches for the secrets of his 
power. If the teacher is worthy of it, the pupil lives in an 
attitude of active reverence. (2) He inquires for explana- 
tions, for directions, for guidance. (3) He eliminates by 

60 



THE THOUGHTS [VI-cI 

active mental resistance all inferior suggestions that might 
injure the spell of his master over him. He throws off 
mediocre artistic influences. (4) He translates into artistic 
work what his teacher has communicated to him in his passive 
attitude. 

Nothing is really ours till we begin to translate it into life. 
It is in the act of translation into concrete facts that we 
turn vision into character. It is as we obey Christ that we 
educate our capacity for listening. We cannot substitute con- 
templation for action. Some are content to be always listen- 
ing, while others are content to be always doing. 

Which is our supreme temptation in this respect? 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK ' 

I 

But upon what in Christ shall the mind think? Shall it be 
his presence as a whole as the light of the New Testament 
illumines it? Yes. We do this in regard to other friends of 
whom we think. We have a place in our thought for thinking 
of a personality as a whole, apart from his specific work. 
There are friends who have helped us along definite lines of 
helpfulness, and while we sometimes think of them in these 
practical relationships, we also think of them simply as great 
souls. Of course, the details of relationship have given the 
materials for the general view. But the point at the moment: 
is that there is a general as well as a particular contemplation 
of Christ — just as when we have climbed up from the valley 
to the summit of a mountain, and have silently contemplated 
the broad sweep of a glorious landscape; or as we close our 
eyes after reading the biography of an almost sublime char- 
acter, and try to image the great personality, detached from 
mundane affairs, looming up before our vision against a back- 
ground of eternal spaciousness. 

It is this general view of which many are in urgent need. 
They have long been living amidst controversial biographical 
details, or they have been students of archeology, or of his- 
torical literary criticism. They have been like botanists who 
have sought out the flora of the valley, but have not seen the 
view from the mountain. One fears that large numbers of 
our young people have been taken upon long botanical excur- 
sions through the valleys, but have not so often had an invita- 

61 



[VI-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

tion to the bracing mountain-top and its awe-inspiring vista 
of grandeur. Is it not most unfortunate, too, that the dis- 
cussions one so often hears regarding Christ have to do so 
exclusively with controversial minutiae which would be right 
enough for theological scholars? But busy, non-theological, 
common-sense men and women have simply neither time, 
training, nor inclination for the involved processes of dis- 
cussion. Has mere criticism not been carried too far into the 
popular mind, while the comprehensive view of Christ has 
been to an unwarrantable degree eclipsed? 

Let us have periods of contemplation upon Christ when we 
read whole books of the New Testament at a time. Let us 
read them over and over until we get the larger view. Let 
us contemplate our Lord in his spiritual transcendence until 
we see something of the magnitude of his place in his relation 
to God and men, to eternity and time, to the present and the 
future. 

II 

But there is also a particular view of Christ which must 
engage our thoughts. We must see him in his relation not 
only to the universal, but to the actual situation in our own 
lives. The great characters of history had not only national 
contacts, they had concrete relations with individuals in actual 
practical life. And this has been preeminently the attitude of 
Christ. He was in a profound sense the discoverer of the 
individual. He was the discoverer of the most fundamental 
needs of the individual. He has made the supreme diagnosis 
of the inner human condition. And we must think of him in 
this relation. How -shall we do it? How do you think of 
the physician when he comes in response to your calls ? You 
think of him in relation to your health. You think of the 
ddcorator in relation to the freshening up of your rooms. 
Each has a clear line of helpfulness along which he moves, 
and for which you invite him to your house. In the same way 
Christ has a definite spiritual relation to our inner needs. And, 
we must think of him as carrying to us in his living person- 
ality the counterpart of our necessity. He has always insisted 
that this was the line along which we must interpret the 
relationship. He has spoken of himself in a variety of func- 
tions as answering human need. 

What then are our needs? In the light of them we shall 

62 



THE THOUGHTS [VI-cI 

interpret our thought of Christ in his relation to us. One 
fundamental necessity is the renewal of the conscience, the 
lifting of the mortgage of guilt, and the readjustment of the 
moral sense. 

(i) We think of Christ as having power morally to for- 
give and morally to restore. That is to say, the mind turns 
to think of him as having the moral authority and compassion 
to forgive on the one hand, and transcendent, communicable 
holiness by which to quicken the conscience on the other. In 
our contemplation of him we think of him as having a dele- 
gated authority given by God and shared by no other for the 
forgiving of human guilt. We meditate upon him as exer- 
cising that authority in our lives, in conjunction with his own 
power — issuing from his spiritual presence — to renew the 
conscience. We think therefore, of Christ in relation to our 
present moral condition as bearing an attitude of active, suf- 
ficient, and immediate inner restoration towards us. "He re- 
storeth my soul." 

(2) We think of him as enlightening, our understanding as 
we contemplate him as our wisdom, and as such revealing 
his mind to us. When we read a great book we are conscious 
of having our minds stimulated, clarified. As we listen to a 
wise man we realize that our minds become illumined and we 
go away with a new vision. How much Plato owed to So- 
crates in the stimulation of his mental originality ! And as 
we think of the mind of Christ being revealed to us in active 
overtures of definite direction, the eyes of our understanding 
become enlightened. To such a degree is this the case that 
those who thus meditate upon him become sharers of a wis- 
dom transcending that of men much wiser in other directions. 

(3) We think, of Christ as communicating moral power to 
us. We image "the exceeding greatness of his power to 
usward who believe." We visualize him as being in an active 
immediate relation to us of communicating his energy. 

I have mentioned these directions along which our thoughts 
move in relation to Christ simply to illustrate the point that 
it is not enough merely to think of Christ in a general way. 
We must intelligently consider Christ as bringing to bear upon 
the variety of our human need the variety of his sufficiency. 
And in our meditation we ought to take time to think deliber- 
ately of him in the various aspects of his redeeming relation — 
not as remote from us — not as something that is possible and 

63 



IVI-cl UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

may happen in the future — but as something that is happening 
within us at this present moment. 

Ill 

It is surely a great mistake to live in an attitude of mere 
moral or spiritual aspiration, more or less confused. Such is 
the chronic condition of large numbers of well-meaning 
people. 

They mistake religious aspiration for Christian character. 
Ardent and muddled longing takes the place of a clear view 
of the situation. The same confused contact with home, or 
business, or friends, would mean the collapse of the relation- 
ship. As a matter of fact while there may be a very definite 
place for religious aspiration, the supreme place of emphasis 
is not upon aspiration, but upon the intelligent recognition 
that Christ maintains a certain immediate, active bearing 
towards our personality. The emphasis at the breakfast table 
is not upon the aspiration for breakfast, but upon the food 
in sight, and the actual partaking of it. The emphasis at the 
railway station is not upon the longing to go to a certain 
place, it is upon actually getting into the right train. 

There is a great amount of mere futile longing in the 
religious attitude of some people. And if that longing were 
clear cut it would not be so bad, but unfortunately it is often 
only a kind of stupid earnestness and the stupidity is excused 
because of the earnestness. But even when this longing is 
not stupid or confused, the emphasis should not be put on the 
longing, but upon a clear visualization and active relation 
towards the object of the longing. Suppose you were to tell 
your host as you sit at his table that you greatly desired to 
partake of the luncheon he has provided. You might even 
enumerate the things you would enjoy; and suppose you con- 
tinued to sit in this detached and longing attitude, he would 
begin to be worried about you. And yet, in all seriousness, this 
is the attitude of some in regard to the spiritual sufficiency 
that is in Christ. Their religious history is largely aspiration. 
It is largely religious self-consciousness. The emphasis of 
their thoughts is upon their condition and longings. And that 
has become a chronic condition. They have a grim satisfac- 
tion in knowing what their specific longings are, but there is 
no real progress beyond that. The same ground is covered 

64 



THE THOUGHTS [VI-c] 

today that was covered yesterday, and it has been so for a 
dozen years. What is the matter? 

The trouble probably arises from the absence of a clear 
vision of Christ in his specific, immediate relation to human 
need. Christ is not seen, at this given moment, as actually 
bearing in his own personality the answer to the needs of 
which one is conscious. 

For instance, if you are thirsty and there is no water within 
reach you keep thinking about your thirst. But when you 
come into contact with a supply of water, you put the em- 
phasis of your thought on the water and not upon your dis- 
appearing thirst. It is a lack of seeing Christ clearly that is 
probably the trouble with this attitude of futile aspiration 
that never arrives. Well, you say, how is one to see him 
clearly? We have gone over that already. But it does not 
matter how often we go over it, if we insist upon being taken 
up with our religious aspirations instead of with Christ, we 
cannot see him clearly, and we never shall in that attitude, 
and nothing spiritually vital therefore can happen. But if we 
transfer the emphasis of our thought to him and the specific 
elements of his personality through which he communicates 
hi£ grace to us, and forget about our aspirations, as we con- 
template him, we shall unconsciously be changed into his 
image. 



65 



CHAPTER VII 

The Will in Relation to Christ 



DAILY READINGS 

Seventh Week, First Day: The Supremacy of the 
Will 

If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the 
teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I speak from 
myself. — John 7: 17. 

■ 

Our will is the focus point of our personality. As we will, 
we live. As we do not will, we drift. Life is fundamentally 
will and we know it. If will is the king, as it were, in the 
inner life, he. must be a constitutional king — he may rule, but 
not overrule. He may be an executive, but not a tyrant. That 
is to say, will has a definite relation to all the other powers of 
our being, but not a coercive relation. Will has a vital rela- 
tion to the reason, but it must not be despotic. We cannot 
will to believe what is obviously false. That would be a 
despotic use of the will. At the same time, we must will to 
believe what reasonably claims us ; if not, then will is a slave 
instead of an executive. 

We must not will to imprison our affections, but we must 
will tp regulate them. Our will affects the rest of us, and is 
affected by the rest of us. But the point we would emphasize 
here is that it is the executive for the personality. And ac- 
cording as it lives and acts healthily so will be the health of 
the rest of our powers. It would be small use to keep inform- 
ing a man's mind whose will is out of business. You might" 
as well try to fill up a bottomless pit. 

Do we live recognizing that the condition of our will is 
imparting light or darkness to our mind? 

66 



THE WILL [VII-2J 

Seventh Week, Second Day: Christ's Relation to 
Our Will 

He was in the world, and the world was made through 
him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, 
and they that were his own received him not. But as many 
as received him, to them gave he the right to become chil- 
dren of God, even to them that believed on his name: 
who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, 
nor of the will of man, but of God. — John 1: 10-13. 

The will is the door of personality. Christ will not, cannot, 
break open that door. Even to redeem us he will not invade 
our personality. He recognizes, respects, and safeguards our 
:ial identity, our native freedom of choice. If he were 
to overpower us, even for our highest good, nothing moral 
would be achieved. He would thus in reality destroy us as 
persons. In the very nature of things, Christ cannot force 
himself or his redeeming grace upon us. And the man who 
says divine love will save him apart from his own will, has 
forgotten that even divine love must wait for the cooperation 
of the human will. But the only separation between our per- 
sonality and the presence, and power of Christ is our will. 
There is nothing that lies between the deepest needs of our 
life and the wealth of his sufficiency except our will. Pause 
and measure the extent of that separation. Refusal means a 
barrier of non-conduction. Assent means that the actual con- 
tact has been established. The action of the will is like turn- 
ing on or turning oft the water in the house. 

Have we exercised our will in relation to Christ as we have 
done in some other great decisions? 



Seventh Week, Third Day: The Will Deciding 

And he led him to Jerusalem, and set him on the pin- 
nacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou art the 
Son of God, cast thyself down from hence: for it is written, 

He shall give his angels charge concerning thee, to 
guard thee: 
and, 

On their hands they shall bear thee up, 

Lest haply thou dash thy foot against a stone. 
And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt 
not make trial of the Lord thy God. — Luke 4: 9-12. 

67 



[VII-4] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

It is not difficult actually to jump from a height, but it may 
be very difficult to make up the mind to do it. It is not 
usually hard to take any actual step, it is the previous pro 
and con debate that is the real difficulty. 

The act of will which is the life's blood of a decision creates 
an historic moment. There we are at the heart of reality 
and sometimes we know it and feel it. We can all think of 
great movements which were born in that moment of an 
heroic decision. There are multitudes who live all their days 
under the spell of one great hour. We realize that it is within 
our power to create a personal crisis by an act of will. We 
know, too, it may be, that as we postpone that crisis, we post- 
pone real living. We know it is possible at this moment to 
resolve that Christ shall have a new nearness to, a new grasp 
upon, our life. Is there anything more momentous than that? 
Is there anything more immediately practical and far reach- 
ing? Is there anything that has such promise throbbing in it 
as the resolve to open the door to Christ now? 

Is there anything more tragic than to let any set of circum- 
stances compel a decision against Christ, when our own sense 
of right would crown him? 

Seventh Week, Fourth Day : The Will Surrender- 
ing 

And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up, and 
said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down; for 
to-day I must abide at thy house. And he made haste, and 
came down, and received him joyfully. And when they 
saw it, they all murmured, saying, He is gone in to lodge 
with a man that is a sinner. And Zacchaeus stood, and said 
unto the Lord, Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give 
to the poor; and if I have wrongfully exacted aught of 
any man, I restore fourfold. — Luke 19: 5-8. 

When a man takes the plunge into an unknown future by 
a moral decision, he commits himself to cooperate with forces 
which begin to exercise a new and powerful directing influ- 
ence upon him. And when one has willed Christ to enter his 
life he has in a real sense abandoned himself to the control 
of Christ. This is not to say that Christ has come into iiis 
life to help him to muddle through. The step involves the 
supremacy of Christ. It !s as if a man, not having made a 

68 



THE WILL [VII-5] 

success of his business, asked a rich and wise friend to help 
him. His friend, refusing to help him, says, however, that he 
will take over the business as a senior partner and put all his 
capital and experience into it, if the man seeking help is will- 
ing to assume the position of junior partner. 

That is what the decision to receive Christ implies. Christ's 
purpose is to take control, cooperating with the will of him 
who has willed the Master into his life. Christ becomes the 
senior partner. Our relation to Christ is not to try to get him 
and his power into our schemes, but to surrender ourselves 
to him and his schemes. 

Is our idea of surrender that of an act or of a lifelong 
attitude ? 

Seventh Week, Fifth Day: The Will Appropriat- 
ing Strength 

That he would grant you, according to the riches of his 
glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through 
his Spirit in the inward man; that Christ may dwell in 
your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted 
and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all 
the saints what is the breadth and length and height and 
depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth 
knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of 
God. — Eph. 3: 16-19. 

When an electrical inventor patiently recognizes and sur- 
renders his mechanism to the laws of electrical conduction 
he also appropriates those laws and hitches them victoriously 
to his invention. When the patriot sacriflcially surrenders to 
the demands of his country, he is able to appropriate into 
himself the essential spirit of his country. And when the 
Christian will has surrendered to the supreme will of Christ 
it is able to appropriate the energy that is in the will of Christ. 
It is the surrendered will • that dares to appropriate fresh 
power from Christ, the power of God. 

This attitude of the will of appropriating may be likened to 
the recharging of the spent electrical battery by contact with 
the current flowing from the power-house. It is the priv- 
ilege of the exhausted Christian will to renew its vitality by 
contact with its source of supply. The consenting will may 
be changed into the energetic will. What is static becomes 

69 



[VII-6] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

dynamic. Capacity becomes ability. But it is only the will 
that wears itself out in obedience to Christ which has the 
fearless trust to claim the energy for its own renewal. It is 
our right now to let our weariness be changed -into might. 

Is inner exhaustion, or power, the supreme element in our 
consciousness? 

Seventh Week, Sixth Day: The Will Cooperating 
with Christ 

Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all nations, bap- 
tizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son 
and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things 
whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you 
always, even unto the end of the world. — -Matt 28: 19, 20. 

The secret of the growth of the pozuer of many men has 
consisted in a great partnership. They became sharers in large 
resources and comprehensive programs. They brought their 
wills into tune with a movement greater than themselves. 
Christ focuses the power of God and the program for the com- 
ing of his Kingdom upon earth. Whoever cooperates with 
Christ becomes a sharer in both the program and tjie power. 
Both of these challenge the Christian will. Christ calls upon a 
man to do something he had never dreamed of doing, and 
which he has no power to achieve. It may be to influence spir- 
itually another life. It may be to undertake a new specific 
social task. Such a command carries with it the ability for the 
task. In the attempt to fulfil the command, the power of 
Christ gets its opportunity to accompany the attempt. The co- 
operating will of a Christian thus obtains its expansive educa- 
tion. It achieves its supreme destiny through the enterprise 
of Christ. This is the message to us from the great char- 
acters of the New Testament and of Christian history. Their 
greatness unconsciously came to them in their self-forgetting 
attitude of cooperation with the will of their Master. What 
they saw was a gigantic task, what they experienced was 
triumphant power. 

Think of the men and women who have become great 
through contact with Christ's missionary program, through • 
expressing his social sympathy. 

Are we definitely related to the universal program of 
Christ? 

70 



THE WILL [VII-7] 

Seventh Week, Seventh Day: The Will Forgetting 
Itself 

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me 
free from the law of sin and of death. For what the law 
could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, 
sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and 
for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the ordinance of 
the law might be fulfilled in us. — Rom. 8: 2-4. 

"If only I could will hard enough. That is my trouble, I 
have not sufficient will power." How often one hears a state- 
ment like that. But it is an entirely wrong point of view. 
In our relation to Christ it is not thought about our will, but 
about him that is the place of emphasis. For example, sup- 
pose someone knocks at your door. You do not think of your 
will, and its condition, you think of the knock at the door, 
and your will acts automatically as a result of that attitude of 
your thoughts. It is the person knocking at the door who 
affects your will. That is to say, zee must not think will, we 
must think Christ. We might think will for years and be no 
further forward ; whereas when we let the mind rest steadily 
upon Christ the will is thereby renewed. The only healthy 
way in which to grow in will power is to forget about it, and 
visualize clearly the presence, power, and commands of Christ. 
Will power is a by-product. Christ-consciousness is a far 
greater creator of will power, than will power is a cre- 
ator of Christ-consciousness. Will worship increases self- 
consciousness and eclipses Christ. Our spiritual power and 
victory can be realized only as we maintain the relation which 
is beyond ourselves. 

Do we think will power or divine power? Do we think 
ours^Jves or beyond ourselves? 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 

I 

When a person arrives at a certain conclusion, say regard- 
ing another person, you may not doubt the honesty or the 
ability of his judgment. But you may feel that the judgment 
lacked something. You say, for example, that it is a weak or 
an uncharitable judgment, which means that you do not be- 
lieve pure reason should act by itself in making a judgment 

.71 



[VII-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

upon a person. As a matter of fact, pure reason never does 
so act. There are always other influences beneath the reason 
and beneath the consciousness which affect the decisions of 
the mind. That is why we say we reveal our own characters 
in our judgments of others. We make manifest what things 
are influencing the mind, whether they are good or bad. So 
we say that there is no such thing as pure reason in our 
relation to Jesus Christ. We bring all that we are to that 
judgment. And instead of judging him, we may be uncon- 
sciously judging ourselves. Men certainly did that in their 
personal relations to him when he lived as a man. We are 
constantly doing it in our own relationships with our fellows. 
Our criticisms sometimes are not really criticisms, they are 
self-revelations. They are a credit to us or they are the re- 
verse. If they are a discredit, the merely intellectual part may 
be very shrewd indeed, but the intellect has not had the 
right kind of illumination from the rest of the personality. It 
is when people know this about themselves that they some- 
times learn not to trust their own judgment, and they turn 
to others who may not be in any sense so clever mentally, but 
who have sounder elements in their personalities which in- 
form their intellects. 

What we wish to do here is to emphasize this fact and try to 
recognize a principle. If one finds a very strong hesitation 
to trust his own harsh judgment regarding a fellow-man, and 
rounds out his impressions by reference to the opinions of 
others, making his judgment more kindly and gracious and 
full, he must let that principle have a place in his life in re- 
gard to Christ. 

II 

Among the influences which affect the judgment for w$al or 
woe none is more effective than the condition of the human 
will. Christ insisted upon the enormous influence of the will 
upon the whole realm of knowledge, not by being conscious of 
itself, but by acting in response to light. He insisted that he 
who doeth shall know. Frederick W. Robertson has told us 
that obedience is the organ of spiritual vision. We have all 
put this to the proof again and again. We have held certain- 
ideas, let us say, during a period of inaction, and when the 
will has acted the whole outlook has changed without anyone 
having said anything. Or when we have been disobedient the 

72 



THE WILL [VII-c] 

situation has changed in the opposite way. The influences of 
the condition of the will upon our mental vision may be sim- 
ply startling — so much so that a new volitional attitude may 
mean an absolutely new view of a given situation — and yet 
when we say this let us remember the renewal of the will is not 
achieved by thought of itself. An hour of reality proceeding 
from an active will has given many a man a new universe to live 
in. What had before appeared to be intolerable, and no argu- 
ment could change it, became like a bank of cloud in the sky 
suddenly transfigured into surpassing beauty as the sun played 
upon it. What large numbers of people require, therefore, 
is not more information and discussion, but more illumination 
arising from the legitimate and healthy relation of the will to 
the mind. We are not here pleading the cause of the will to 
believe; we are simply insisting upon the automatic inter- 
relation of the faculties. "The will to believe" may mean an 
entirely artificial relation to reality. As the idea is sometimes 
popularly understood, "the will to believe" may simply be the 
violation of intellectual integrity, a kind of highwayman with 
a cocked pistol saying to the reason "Money or your life." 
That kind of thing can have no place in a rational existence. 
But the natural, normal influence of the will upon the pro- 
cesses of thought is an entirely different matter. 

Let us see to it then that the active will is doing its share 
in the true vision of life. The purely intellectual attitude is 
unhealthy, abnormal, deceptive. It is not really rational liv- 
ing. Many people think it is, for they put no great emphasis 
upon living. A man may have a will as weak as water and 
keep his affairs like a junk shop. He may have no kind of 
relation to the ordinary facts of social existence^ no memory 
for his engagements, no contact with concrete reality, and yet 
because he has a keen mind and is an original thinker every- 
thing is excused. But surely that is not the attitude in which 
we see reality. For what we see must always depend upon 
what we bring from our deeper selves to our mental vision. 
Robert Browning in "Andrea del Sarto" declares that intel- 
lectual power unaided by the moral will was responsible for 
the limitations which the painter saw in his artistic work. He 
makes the artist say that he sees a truer light of God burning 
in the work of certain other men, though their talent is feebler 
than his own. 

Fra Angelico painting angels on his knees may not com- 

73 



[VII-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

mand your unqualified enthusiasm. But at any rate he had 
more of the secret of insight than had Andrea del Sarto. 

When a critic said to a great artist, "I never saw smch a 
sunset as you have painted," the artist replied, "Do you not 
wish you had the vision?" 

HI 

. The will not only gives health to the mind, it translates into 
actual, concrete facts what the mind sees. The will bridges 
the gulf between perceiving the truth and living it. It turns 
vision into life. The enlightened will moralizes the intel- 
lectual outlook. When the intellect sees, and the will does 
rnoft act upon what the intellect sees, then the intellectual does 
not become the moral. It does not matter how clear, or 
original, or accurate, the mental vision may be, it does not 
/become moral reality until the will puts its signature upon it. 
How much intellectual comprehension never gets down to life ! 
How much interest in religion reaches no further than the 
intellectual perception of truth ! The climax of the interest 
< of some is simply a discussion, an intellectual admission, a 
recognition of reasonableness. The whole aim of many people 
lis simply to get other people to make certain mental admis- 
sions regarding Christianity. And suppose the admission is 
made, and no translation of it is made by the will into life, 
how futile it all becomes. 

This is the great weakness of a mere apologetic interest in 
Christ. That, of course, has its own important place, but if 
the interest is to go no further, then it is of minor importance. 
A merely intellectual interest in Christ or in Christianity does 
siot raise that interest above the academic. It may not have 
any more religion in it than an interest in any other purely 
aca4emic subject. The man who is related to Christian truth 
.only through his brain may be an out and out pagan, and all 
the more pagan because he keeps such high realities apart 
from the practical aspect of his life. Let us get away from 
the idea that mere mental association with even the highest 
spiritual truth is in itself meritorious. For if it leads us no 
further, if it is not translated by the will into character and 
social fact, then it may be that the light in us becomes dark- 
mess. 

It is a terrible mistake to trifle with spiritual things, to deal 
an them as a storekeeper deals in his wares, without being 

74 



THE WILL tVII-clf 

personally related to them. That spells moral degradation. 
That is professionalism of the rankest kind. When the will 
refuses to carry out to moral completion the spiritual truth 
recognized by the mind, such refusal not only reacts dam- 
agingly on the will, it reacts in the same way upon the mind. 
The mental vision in spiritual things has begun to be impaired 
— not all at once, any more than eyesight becomes impaired 
all at once — but the process has started. Until the attitude 
of the will changes upward, a man has spiritually seen his 
best days. So far as his apprehension of spiritual truth is 
concerned, he remains the victim of trusting more to his mem- 
ory of what once was real to him, than to his vision of what 
is real to him today. Such is the difference between preserved 
fruit and fruit fresh from the tree. It is like the difference 
between a moving picture and the actual scene. 

It is then as the will continues to translate into life what 
the enlightened mind sees, that there is given to us the guar- 
antee of more enlightenment of mind. For there is a con- 
tinual increase of insight issuing from the action of the alert 
and heroic will. It is our supreme method of spiritual illumi- 
nation. Such illumination is not merely an extension of the 
range of our knowledge; it also becomes part of the moral 
working capital of our personality. 

The most urgent problem in the lives of some is to bridge 
the chasm between intellectual perception and action. Are we 
ever learning, but never coming to a knowledge of the truth? 



75 



CHAPTER VIII 

The Imagination in Relation to 
Christ 

DAILY READINGS 

Eighth Week, First Day: Imagination as the 
Pioneer Faculty Upwards 

Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, a conviction 
of things not seen. For therein the elders had witness 
borne to them. — Heb. n: i, 2. 

Faith expresses itself in part through the imagination, for 
it is in the nature of faith to visualize its object, and such 
visualization is possible through the use of the imagination. 
The imagination is the highest faculty we possess. And if it is 
under the highest direction and control it fulfils a sublime 
function. It is like fire — without control it may work havoc, 
but, when properly guided, it may perform the greatest 
service. 

Imagination is the power within us which reaches out, 
which — like the swallow — ventures to another clime. It is not 
content to live like ' the chickens around the barnyard. It 
makes the great venture in business, in exploration, in liter- 
ature, in science, in art, in everything that is really worth 
while. Without imagination we would be helpless prisoners 
in the grip of circumstance. Life would have no poetry, no 
romance, nothing really picturesque. All that has been 
achieved which is of permanent worth in the life of the world 
has been achieved primarily through imagination. Imagination 
has been the architect of it. And what is imagination? It is 
the venture of the highest in us. 

What would you say to the man who says he has no imag- 
ination ? 

76 



THE IMAGINATION [VIII-2] 

Eighth Week, Second Day: Imagination as the 
Pioneer Faculty Downwards 

And even as they refused to have God in their knowl- 
edge, God gave them up unto a reprobate mind, to do 
those things which are not fitting; being filled with all 
unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; 
full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 
backbiters, hateful to God, insolent, naughty, boastful, in- 
ventors of evil things, disobedient to parents. — Rom. 
1: 28-30. 

There is no escape from the fact that we possess imagina- 
tion any more than from the fact of will. We may not use it, 
or we may make a bad use of it. 

When the imagination is under the spell of evil the con- 
sequences in human life become appalling. The condition is 
here mentioned as a "reprobate mind," or, as Dr. Moffatt 
translates it, "a reprobate instinct." And that is exactly what 
imagination is when under the influence of evil. It is a sub- 
lime instinct become reprobate. It is the highest tumbling to 
the lowest. It is a fallen angel. It is the artist in us turned 
traitor, glorifying the false, and falsifying the glorious. It 
reveals to the mind an inverted world. Everywhere and in 
everything the erqphasis is absolutely wrong. The reprobate 
instinct turns its magic light on the creature rather than upon 
the creator. It paints in gold and scarlet what should be 
painted in dark colors. It paints in drab colors that which 
should be splashed with sunlight. It makes men see each 
other at their worst instead of at their best. It makes material 
things appear as the all important, and thereby distils covet- 
ousness in human hearts. It intoxicates anger into the spirit 
of murder. It creates false fears, and false securities. It 
inspires envy rather than sacrifice. 

Such is the natural history of the highest power in us when 
under the spell of the sinister suggestion, and its goal is Utter 
darkness. 

In what things is our imagination playing us false? 

Eighth Week, Third Day: The Relation of the 
Imagination to the Reason and the Will 

For the invisible things of him since the creation of the 
world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things 

77 



\[VIII-4] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; 
that they may be without excuse: because that, knowing 
God, they glorified him not as God, neither gave thanks; 
but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless 
heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, 
they became fools. — Rom. i : 20-22. 

Recognizing the imperfection of the analogy, but for the 
sake of clearness, let' us think of the human imagination as 
the architect of the house of Character, the will as the 
builder, and the reason as the owner. 

In an ill-balanced and bad life, imagination as the architect 
is under an evil inspiration and makes a bad plan for the 
house of life. And to add to the mischief, the architect bullies 
both the builder and the owner, so that they are forced to 
assist in the base venture. Such is a wicked life. 

In an ill-balanced but good life, the imagination as the 
architect makes a good enough plan, but does not sufficiently 
consult or cooperate with either the builder or the owner in 
the making of the plan, and succeeds in compelling both of 
them to carry out a scheme to which they had given no 
real sanction. Such may be a fanatical life. 

In a well-balanced life, there is a clear understanding be- 
tween the enlightened imagination as architect, the reason as 
awner, and the will as builder. Each recognizes the function 
of the other. They are allies. They are associates. They 
fulfil their task in their own sphere. The imagination as 
architect goes ahead and makes the plans with the sanction 
of the reason as owner. The will as builder puts up the build- 
ing according to the plan. Such is a well-balanced life. 

In what attitude does our imagination live in its association 
with our will and reason ? 

Eighth Week, Fourth Day : The Relation of Christ 
to the Imagination 

And when he was come into the house, the blind men 
came to him: and Jesus saith unto them, Believe ye that I 
am able to do this? They say unto him, Yea, Lord. Then 
touched he their eyes, saying, According to your faith be 
it done unto you. — Matt. 9: 28, 29. 

Christ appeals to our imagination — to the architect, to the 
pioneer power in us. You say : "No ; Christ appeals to f aith." 

78 



THE IMAGINATION [VIII-5] 

I quite agree. For, as we have said, faith works through 
imagination. Faith cannot be fully exercised except through 
imagination. You cannot exercise faith in anything except as 
your imagination is at work upon it. This is true not only in 
our relation to Christ, but in our relation to everything. It 
is not Christ alone who calls for faith. Everything to which 
we are related calls for faith, for the exercise of imagination. 
For example, if you make an investment your power of ex- 
plicit reasoning carries you only up to a certain point in the 
transaction. You must exert your faith, and imagination is 
the means by which you do it, even in the soundest financial 
transaction. Every banking house makes an appeal for faith. 
Every home and every member of it makes an appeal for 
faith. That train you are to take today makes an appeal for 
the sound exercise of your imagination. 

If you say that you refuse to use your imagination, to exert 
faith, in your relations with the world in which you live, then 
you simply must cease to have any relations with the world. 
You thereby cut yourself off from everything and everybody. 

When Christ calls for faith, he calls for the highest use of 
your imagination. He challenges your imagination to trust 
him in your approach to the realities of the eternal world. 
He appeals to the same imagination that makes ventures in 
finance, in love, in journeys. He calls upon you to go on with 
this process of trust, to carry it forward from the visible to 
the invisible world. He is a candidate for your faith, for 
the leadership and direction of your imagination. 

Do we give our imagination to Christ as we give it to 
others? 

Eighth Week, Fifth Day: The Christian Use o£ 
the Imagination 

Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought right- 
eousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 
quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, 
from weakness were made strong, waxed mighty in war,, 
turned to flight armies of aliens. — Heb. 11: 33, 34. 

When a man has decided to put up a Gothic structure, his 
architect puts himself under the spell of the best Gothic ex- 
amples he knows. He has for the time being, as it were, a 
Gothic imagination. 

79 



fVIII-6] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

So when one surrenders his imagination to the spell of 
Christ there are certain definite influences exerted by Christ 
upon the imagination. It is regulated, it is purified, it is re- 
directed, it is inspired. The change in the imagination as a 
result of the domination of Christ is one of the most moment- 
ous of facts. This change carries at the heart of it the 'most 
definitely practical results amongst the details of living. 

For one thing, Christ inspires the imagination with op- 
timism. He changes the outlook. When he infuses his spirit 
into the imagination the best is not all in the past. Life has a 
fresh start. Under his purifying presence the imagination is 

i redeemed from servitude to the base and to the baser self. 
It rises from the prison house of what is gross into freedom 
to pursue what is divine. It ascends from a material world 
to a spiritual universe. It is raised to see more spacious plans 
for life and service. The ascending imagination gets a world 
vision of the program of Christ and becomes part of it. It 
is at home in a universe of mystery, for it has found a guide, 
it has found a secret, a goal. 

1 It is not confused amidst the paradoxes of life, for it is 
supported by a great confidence. This Christ-inspired imag- 
ination does not escape from this present world, leaving it 
to its fate. It faces the world's dire need. It brings from 
eternity the plans of a new earth wherein dwelleth righteous- 
ness. And it sings at its stupendous task of conquest. 

Is our imagination exercising the same enterprise in Christ's 
service as it has done in other things? 

Eighth Week, Sixth Day: The Fight of the Chris- 
tian Imagination 

For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but 
against the principalities, against the powers, against the 
world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts 
of wickedness in the heavenly places. Wherefore take up 
the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand 
in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand. — Eph. 6: 
12, 13. 

The battlefield of life is primarily in the imagination. Do 
you say that such a statement brings the fight into a region of 
foolish unreality? I contend that the imagination is in touch 
with the headquarters of reality. It is the invisible world that 

80 



THE IMAGINATION [VIII-7] 

is the real world, it is the visible world that is the shadow 
world. 

It is the imagination which is the immediate point of con- 
tact with the unseen world. And in that unseen world it is 
the imagination which meets the supreme enemies of human 
life and destiny. 

Unless it has strong rcenforcements, imagination is likely to 
go dozen under the assault of its foes. The sinister suggestion 
of discouragement, or of despair, is an intensely practical fact 
and the conflict between the highest and the lower than the 
highest goes on every day. The imagination is the battle- 
ground where two forces contend, and we all know it. This 
invisible antagonism is the life's blood of history, it is the 
soul of human experience. 

IV hen we are overpozvered <n this inner struggle we are 
beaten everywhere. When zee are victorious in the realm of 
imagination zee conquer dozen among the concrete things of 
the daily round. 

It is of more primary importance that our imagination 
should be reenforced by the sustaining power of Christ than 
that our circumstances should be changed. We do not make 
light of changed circumstances, but the fountain-head of all 
change is within ourselves. And the supreme aid that can 
come to us is Christ's power sustaining and guiding the imag- 
ination in its daily struggle. 

Is the emphasis of our concern upon a change in our cir- 
cumstances, or upon a Christ-inspired imagination? 

Eighth Week, Seventh Day: The Victory of the 
Christian Imagination 

For whatsoever is begotten of God overcometh the 
world: and this is the victory that hath overcome the 
world, even our faith. And who is he that overcometh 
the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of 
God?— I John 5: 4, 5. 

When the Christian imagination persists in the conquest of 
sinister and gross and despairing suggestions, what happens? 
This triumphant attitude calls out the reserves within us. It 
multiplies our strength. The victorious leader quadruples the 
power of his followers. The sanguine expectant imagination 
not only saves the other faculties from paralysis, it summons 

81 



[VIII-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

them to joyous achievement. This was the attitude of those 
warriors mentioned in the Scriptures, who under divine in- 
spiration commanded victory. They visualized it through 
their reenforced personality. This was their secret. They 
could never have won what they did attain by any other 
means. This is what the Bible means when it says again and 
again that victory comes to those who have faith, and this is 
why it puts the emphasis upon faith — not because of what 
faith is in itself, but because of the bond it establishes, be- 
cause of what issues from the established bond. When people 
criticise the persistent Christian emphasis upon faith, they 
forget to show us something that can effectively take the place 
of an inspired imagination. For there is no situation in life 
in which the Christian imagination can be beaten, so long as 
it is inspired by the conscious ^presence of the Leader in the 
campaign for the coming of the Kingdom of God. 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 



Do you say that all we have been considering is simply 
a revelation of psychological law which is quite independent 
of Christ and of our personal relation to Christ? I at once 
admit that it is psychological law. But psychological descrip- 
tion does not cover the whole content of Christian experience. 
I admit that the electric light which shines in my room comes 
along a wire. But that is only a part of the truth. It also 
comes from a power house in the form of a mysterious cur- 
rent which flows along the wire into the room. If there should 
be a stoppage of the current there would be instantaneous 
darkness, even although the wire in my room remained intact. 
The wire and the electricity are counterparts. So are Christ 
and psychological law counterparts. If you doubt it, then try 
the psychological law without reference to him and see if you 
can get the real Christian results. 

I am inclined to think that psychological law itself has been 
revealed to us through Christ. Would we have known apart 
from Christ the extent to which psychological law operated 
in the direction of successful living? Is. even psychology 
not indebted to Christianity for light upon the fact of psycho- 
logical laws? The great inventor does not create mechanical 
laws, but he may be the first to reveal them and to join them 

82 



THE IMAGINATION [VIII-cl 

to practical problems. So while Christ has not created psycho- 
logical laws, has he not revealed and applied them to life in a 
way and to a degree no other has done? Have others not 
learned from the psychological processes of Christian experi- 
ence facts concerning psychological law that might otherwise 
not have been known? It is easy to see a psychological pro- 
cess at work, and then to ignore the one who gave that 
process its significance. But again, would you say that thr 
results of certain psychological forces, used by individual: 
apart from Christ, are the same as the results of those forces 
operating in association with Christ? 

The answer to that question can be made only by an appeal 
to actual experience. And for myself I do not know of any 
human consciousness in the world which is the same as that 
issuing from spiritual association with Jesus Christ. I have 
heard no testimony such as issues from fellowship with him. 
I have recognized no such atmosphere encircling personalities. 
I have witnessed no such group as those who have a death- 
less passion for the universal coming of the 'divine Kingdom. 
I have seen no such joy in the thick of material disaster; no 
such hope; no such peace; no such profound moral recon- 
struction ; no such symmetrical proportion of various moral 
elements. Now it is all very well to say that you can produce 
these results by other means. The point at present is that 
it' is not done. There are natural pearls and reconstructed 
pearls and they are wonderfully alike, but they are radically 
different. There are all kinds of natural precious stones and 
all kinds of manufactured ones. It is not a question as to 
whether one is as good as the other, the point is that they 
are structurally different. Their natural history is different. 
And so in regard to psychological phenomena and Christian 
experience, while they may have many points of resemblance 
they have a fundamentally different origin. Why do I say 
that? Because you cannot have the same psychological re- 
sults as those flowing from association with Christ, until you 
create a source that will have all the powers and qualities 
which we believe Christ to possess. You must construct the 
equivalent of Christ before you can have anything like the 
equivalent in experience. Before you could have the psycho- 
logical result of Christian experience you would require to 
have a psychological cause large enough for the psychological 
effects. 



[VIII-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 



II 

Besides, the problem is more than a psychological one, it is 
a moral problem. You cannot settle moral questions merely 
by psychology. Let one try to settle his bills by subjective 
psychology and see what happens. Let him try to settle an 
injury he has done to another person by subjective psy- 
chology and he will realize that he is leaving out of the 
problem the chief factor in it. Our relation to God through 
Christ rises far beyond psychology. It is a moral relation, 
and moral issues which far transcend psychology are faced 
and dealt with and adjusted in the light of a moral order in 
the universe, and our consciences know it. Psychology does 
not deal with these issues, it cannot in the very nature of the 
case. Does the telegraph instrument deal with the inter- 
national problems it writes out on the message form? Does 
the telephone deal with the problems it transmits? Neither 
can subjective psychology deal with problems which immeas- 
urably transcend psychology, inasmuch as we live in a moral 
and spiritual universe and not merely in psychological states 
of mind. We live in a universe of personal relationships, and 
not in a mere condition of hypnotic self-communion. 

If psychology were the fundamental explanation of Chris- 
tian experience, we could not get away from ourselves. It 
would be the laws of our own being with which we would 
enter into communion. There would be no self escape. But 
we are conscious that the soul of our victorious Christian 
experience consists in our freedom from ourselves, in the 
objectification of our thoughts outside of and beyond our- 
selves. We are most Christian when we are least self- 
conscious. Our experience is most profoundly real when we 
have completely forgotten ourselves. The psychology of 
Christian experience begins when we have forgotten all about 
psychology. 

Ill 

It is when we respond to the challenge of Christ to have 
faith in him through the exercise of our imagination that we 
make the highest use of it. In this way we are introduced 
to him. Imagination begins the establishment of the relation- 
ship. It is so in other relations. Just as we are introduced 
to Christ through the venture of faith, so we grow in the 

8 4 



THE IMAGINATION [VIII-c] 

knowledge of him. We realize in our relation to him that it 
is better to trust than to understand. In that attitude the 
intimacy is deepened. For it is only faith that can deepen a 
relationship, while suspicion suspends real intimacy. Out of 
that relationship there come Christian duties to be performed, 
which also require faith in the doing of them. That is to say, 
our imagination is inspired both by our relation to Christ and 
by our relation to the tasks he gives us to do. We enter his 
presence by faith and we go from his presence to serve him 
by faith. 

It is thus our imagination is educated, disciplined, and 
bound to Christ, by a double bond of personal attachment and 
service. This education of our imagination is of vast im- 
portance. For it is by such education that zi'e are able to grow 
in affection tozeards Christ and our fellows. Our imagina- 
tion, resting upon the love of our Lord, inspires sympathy 
to reciprocate his love. 

Sympathy grows through the upward growth of the imag- 
ination. It dies as imagination contracts and decays. When 
we say that if we could put ourselves in another's place we 
would be more sympathetic, we simply mean that the exercise 
of imagination inspires sympathy. When we come to think 
of it, a large amount of hard-heartedness is simply caused 
by a lack of the proper use of the imagination. Christ by 
our association with him and through the tasks he is laying 
upon us is developing in us, without our thinking about it, 
that refinement of imagination ♦which inspires sympathy. Our 
sympathy towards Christ reaches him through imagination 
awakening it. We shall never recover that missing note of 
personal affection tozvards Christ until our relations with him 
have more imagination and less cold-blooded academic calcu- 
lation. And zee shall not deepen our sympathy with our fel- 
lows unless zee let more of our imagination out upon their 
lot. It is by living over with our fellows their hardships, 
their poverty, their loneliness, their agony, their longings, that 
the new day is to come in our world. A Christ-educated 
imagination will lead us beyond an academic discussion of 
brotherhood into an actual kinship of awakened, fearless, and 
self-effacing sympathy. 



85 



CHAPTER IX 

Some Elements in the Inner 
Change 

DAILY READINGS 

Ninth Week, First Day: The Sense of the Love 
of Christ 

That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; to the 
end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be 
strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth 
and length and height and depth, and to know the love of 
Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto 
all the fulness of God. — Eph. 3 : 18, 19. 

Some people are too much preoccupied to know that they 
are loved. For in order to know it there must be a certain 
spirit of recollection. Mental hurry blasts the knowledge of 
it. When do we know that we are loved? When we make 
room in our thoughts for the acts of another which reveal it. 
Sometimes those acts are as plain as a pikestaff, sometimes 
they are not so obvious. But whatever the actions may be 
which declare it, we make the fact of our being loved clear 
to ourselves by some kind of unhurried reflection. 

One reason why the love of Christ is not real to many is 
simply that the mind is in a whirl of continual preoccupation. 

But when the thoughts turn towards Christ, when the zvill 
and imagination respond to his overtures, there is kindled 
within us a sense of divine love. 

It is not merely a recognition that the attitude of God in 
Christ is loving. It is that divine love is actually within us, 
it has become part of our experience. It lays hold upon us. 
Just as we feel the actual warmth of the sun as we keep our- 

86 



ELEMENTS IN THE INNER CHANGE [IX-2] 

selves in the sunshine, so, thinking upon Christ's relation to 
us, we are changed by the actual contact of divine affection. 
Our inner coldness of spirit is thawed out. Our fear is dis- 
pelled. "Perfect love casteth out fear." 

Do we give the divine love an opportunity to reach us? 

Ninth Week, Second Day: The Love of Christ as 
a Supreme Fact 

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall 
tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or naked- 
ness, or peril, or sword? . . . Nay, in all these things we 
are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For 
I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor 
principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor 
powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall 
be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in 
Christ Jesus our Lord. — Rom. 8: 35, 37-39. 

The one supreme fact in the inner life of a Christian is the 
divine love. That is the controlling reality. There are a great 
many other realities of which a Christian is conscious, but 
they are put in their proper place, into their right relation and 
proportion, by the great dominating reality. 

A Christian is quite aware that he is not morally perfect 
in himself'; he knows that he is exposed to invincible igno- 
rance in some things. He realizes that all kinds of trouble 
may await him. But the inner change which has taken place 
in him is that he has put everything in bondage to the master 
thought of the love of God in Christ. He centers his life 
around that triumphant conviction. 

He is possessed by a love which is a cleansing, redeeming 
force, and it is at work bringing all else into subjection to its 
sway. Things that in themselves would strike terror, would 
poison the whole outlook upon life, are turned into a medicine 
because the chief ingredient is the divine love. 

Is the love of Christ or the hostility of circumstances the 
more influential fact in our experience? 

Ninth Week, Third Day: The Renewal of Our 
Affection 

There is no fear in love: but perfect love casteth out 
fear, because fear hath punishment; and he that feareth is 

*7 



[IX-41 UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

not made perfect in love. We love, because he first loved 
us? — I John 4: 18, 19. 

It is a matter of very real concern in the lives of many as 
to how to increase their love towards Christ, even when 
obedient to him. There is often a keen sense of failure, after 
trying hard to arouse affection. But is it not love that begets 
love? Is it not the contemplation of the divine attitude which 
renews our own? 

All the heat which we have on this planet came from the 
sun. And all the love which we give back to God came orig- 
inally from him. 

Therefore if our exhausted sympathy is to be revived and 
refreshed, we must keep ourselves in the love of God. We 
must often meditate upon that which most definitely and 
vividly declares to us the compassion of the divine heart. 
Dr. John Watson (Ian Maclaren) told me that Matthew 
Arnold, after attending a service at Sefton Park Church on 
the last day of his life, came in to luncheon while staying at 
a friend's house, humming the hymn "When I Survey the 
Wondrous Cross," and said he considered it the most beauti- 
ful hymn in the language. That hymn leads the mind to the 
contemplation of divine love as the inspiration of our own. ■ 

Do we let the thought of the love of Christ have a place in 
the renewal of our love? \ 

Ninth Week, Fourth Day: Christ at Work 

For it is God who worketh in you both to will and to 
work, for his good pleasure. — Phil. 2: 13. 

In our physical life we are not conscious of the transforma- 
tion of food into blood and bone and brain. Nor are we con- 
scious of the law of healing as nature repairs a wound. A 
great deal happens within us, in the whole range of our com- 
plex being, beneath our consciousness of it. We have certain 
conditions to fulfil, of course, but that is not the point at the 
moment. 

If Christ takes the initiative in the inner spiritual life, then 
his work begins beneath our consciousness of it. For while . 
he reaches us in part through our consciousness, and while 
it is obvious 'we cooperate with him through our conscious- 
ness, there is a work to be done in us which is deeper than 



ELEMENTS IN THE INNER CHANGE [IX-5] 

that restricted area. There is a work of purification and 
repair and -redirection of which our consciousness is not 
aware. If our spiritual regeneration were to be only within 
the scope of that limited section of us of which we are con- 
scious, the outlook would be discouraging. 

The physician does not deal merely with the red rash of 
which the child has told him. And the comfort of it is, that 
the Physician of our souls is at work upon us deeper than 
we know, when we trust him, and contemplate him as at work, 
and give him a free hand. 

Ninth Week, Fifth Day: Christ Relating the Life 
to Its True Environment 

So then, my beloved, even as ye have always obeyed, not 
as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, 
work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. — 
Phil. 2: 12. 

Think of life in any of the kingdoms of nature without 
relationships, seeds without earth, fishes without water, man 
without society, a mind without a reasonable universe. It 
would all be meaningless and impossible. The very statement 
of it is a contradiction. Relationship is the destiny of every- 
thing, and most of all is this true of man. Death means the 
cessation of relationship, life is the expansion of it. And 
when Christ has the right of way in a life, he begins to 
rescue it from partial existence, and to liberate it to find cor- 
respondence with its normal human environment. For most 
people have not established connections with the full scope of 
their environment, and consequently are only partially alive. 
Our full environment may be said to be fourfold — a relation 
to God, to the facts of providence, to self, and to humanity. 

Christ working in us binds us to God. He reconciles us 
to the realities of life through faith in the fact that no hos- 
tility of circumstances can destroy our essential life. He 
relates us to ourselves by giving us a motive in living, great 
enough to unify the scattered elements of our inner being. 
He brings us into normal relation to our fellows by creating 
a love sufficient to maintain the contact. Christ's opportunity 
in us, while on the one hand it may start beneath conscious- 
ness, on the other hand urges us to make full connections 
with the universe outside of ourselves. 

89 



[IX-6] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

Ninth Week, Sixth Day: Christ Releasing from 
Slavery to the World 

And be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye 
transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may 
prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of 
God. — Rom. 12: 2. 

People live in a variety of mental attitudes towards the 
spirit of the world, towards its pride, its ambitions, its pleas- 
ures, and its prizes. Some have surrendered to the temper of 
the world, they have become part of it. Others have fled from 
it by mental or social isolation, or both. They are neither 
of the world nor in the world. Many others have made a 
compromise between these two extremes. They are half in 
and half out of the world. But the Christian way is neither 
surrender, nor retreat, nor compromise. It is to stay right in 
the thick of human affairs, but without conforming to the 
spirit of the world — to be -in it, and very much in it, and yet 
not of it ; to live in genial human contacts ; to retain a zest 
for life ; and yet to live beyond the petty, self-centered aims 
of a passing show. How is it to be done? 

By Christ renewing the mind, by the continual bathing of 
the thoughts in his presence. As the body is renewed by food 
and sleep, so we may come back to the world with renewed 
enthusiasms and purified ambitions in the presence of our 
Lord. For the spirit of worldliness or unworldliness is an 
attitude of mind. And it is only in the Changeless Presence 
that the mind can be raised above a changing world. 

Ninth Week, Seventh Day : The New Patience 

Knowing that the proving of your faith worketh 
patience. And let patience have its perfect work, that ye 
may be perfect and entire, lacking in nothing. — James 1: 
3> 4. 

It is when men lose confidence in leadership that they grow 
impatient. But a great trust in a leader means great patience 
in tribulation. So the intimate, personal leadership of Christ, 
when it is real to us, gives the secret of patient endurance. 
For he gives the light necessary to make patience intelligible. 
We can endure when we are able to trust the motive of our 
leader, when we can rely upon his judgment, when we are 

90 



ELEMENTS IN THE INNER CHANGE [IX-c] 

sure of his comradeship, and when we believe in the worth 
of his final aims. This is really the heart of patience, to live 
in the spirit of the broad view, to look at single events as parts 
of a whole. In that attitude it is perfectly natural to hear a 
man say : "All things work together for good." Without that 
attitude it is not astonishing to hear a man say like Jacob : 
"All these things are against me." Faith in Christ then means 
patience, and patience is the guarantee of much more that 
grows out of it. It becomes the creator of most valuable by- 
products in the realm of character. "In your patience ye shall 
win your souls." 

Let us not forget that Christian patience is an active as 
well as a passive virtue. It covers the work of an athlete on 
the field as well as the endurance of an invalid in the sick 
room. And heroism may be a finer thing when it endures 
without the inspiration of an audience. 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 



There must inevitably be a great inner change in the lift- of 
a Christian under the leadership of Christ because there is no 
other such leader. There is nowhere such an embodiment as is 
found in Christ of what human life requires in order to realize 
its true destiny. It is not enough according to historical 
Christianity to say we may have the leadership of God apart 
from Christ. For Christ answers the human need for a lead- 
ership which mediates God to the soul. Men demand a leader- 
ship which meets them on the human level. And of all such 
leaders Christ is supreme not only because of the content of 
his message, but because of his abiding presence to lead the 
world. 

History has shown how inadequate the highest human lead- 
ership has been for long stretches of time, when men cried out 
for satisfaction in the deepest things of life. Even in your own 
experience your memory may be the grave of a dozen dead 
leaders, whom you have outgrown. Each has guided you 
through a phase, a period, but you outlived him, for he led 
you only in one aspect of life. We all have seen how the 
masterful spirit who has swept his followers off their feet 
for a time was in jeopardy every hour — a false step, and his 
power has died in a day. But even when the leader of yes- 

91 



[IX-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

terday fails to meet the present situation the human instinct 
for leadership remains. Was this ever more evident than in 
the life of today? Do you realize how many confident voices 
have been silenced by the terrible irony of events? We are 
not so sure now that this or that theorist has the vision for 
the world's needs. The fact is, ours is a disillusioned world, 
we live in a period when leader after leader has fallen under 
suspicion and into ominous silence. New knowledge which 
men hoped would lead them has deepened their perplexity. 
Social unrest has awakened a deeper craving for inner tran- 
quillity. The problems of the future bewilder the most in- 
trepid intellect. The most astute mind can only feel his way 
along a path the world's life has never before trodden. The 
problems of tomorrow are too vast, and complicated, and be- 
yond historical precedent for the highest groups of specialized 
human intelligence. At their best and bravest and wisest, 
they can only guess and hope and wait. Therefore if Christ 
is what Christians believe him to be, if he is what he has 
professed to be, if he is what questioning, groping men 
faintly hope he may turn out to be to this modern world, 
when he gets a square chance such as he has not yet had — 
then those who believe they have received him must have a 
definite advantage over others who do not so believe. They 
must have a conviction others have not, a confidence, a power, 
a message, others have not. 

II 

The inner change wrought by Christ is distinctly a funda- 
mental change. It strikes at the roots of life. It awakens, 
and disturbs, and challenges what is disturbed by no other 
influence. So much in a life can remain asleep until Christ 
enters. So much in us can talk back till Christ comes. But 
when the Master gets possession, there is a solemn arraign- 
ment of formerly undisturbed inner conditions. There is a 
fundamental thoroughness about Christ's relation to our lives 
which is startlingly practical. It goes to the very heart of 
human weakness and failure; it is inconceivable that any 
probe could reach deeper. No other contact with human con- 
dition approaches the searching reality of the touch of Christ. 
He deals with the very next thought of the mind, giving it 
steadiness and a new purpose. He deals with the task we 
have in hand at the moment and gives a higher motive for its 

92 



ELEMENTS IN THE INNER CHANGE [IX-cl 

accomplishment. He seeks out the unconfessed wrong, the 
unsubdued mental vagrancy. The neglected dust-covered cor- 
ners of life are swept by light from his presence. Not in 
anger, but with the supremely compassionate purpose of inner 
renewal, he reaches the inmost recesses of human life. Is 
there any other such moral overture made to mankind which 
so penetrates to the innermost zone of moral consciousness? 
If not, can there be any change so radical as that which is 
effected by Christ? Do not say it is not often done. That is 
not Christ's fault. It is done when Christ gets a free hand, 
and we know it. The point here is that real Christianity 
meets the fundamental moral situation. Christ reaches down 
to the lowest depths of the human state and begins the work 
of recovery, so that the worst man who ever lived may find 
himself through the healing ministry back in conscious union 
with God. If there is no other contact which reaches the 
moral quick as Christ reaches it, then there can be no such 
upward change in men as he achieves. Think of the variety 
of all the other influences which appeal to us for consideration 
— how superficial is their healing touch. Think of all the 
other messages — how shallow is their moral diagnosis. But 
Christ plumbs the depths, not to condemn but to rescue and 
restore. 

Ill 

The inner change means that everything touching the life 
may be assimilated into spiritual pirvuer. As abounding physi- 
cal health conquers the seeds of disease which might other- 
wise prove fatal, so Christ's abundant life enables the Chris- 
tian soul to become more than a conqueror in relation to the 
antagonisms of the world. As the tree with its roots struck 
deep into the earth is able to draw from it such nourishment 
as to thrive upon the elemental storms, so the life of Christ 
in men is the guarantee of survival and growth amidst the 
storms of life. It is not only that no harm can come when 
he nourishes the human spirit; it is also that everything con- 
spires to make it more Christlike. It is not conquest merely, it 
is more than conquest. Many things cannot be conquered. 
What men call tragedies and trifles cannot be conquered. That 
is to say, we cannot escape them. We cannot escape the pin 
pricks of a petty soul any more than we can escape the 
shadows of death. But we can more than conquer them. The 

93 



[IX-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

antagonisms which pursue us may be tamed into elements of 
personal growth. Through Christ everything in the universe 
may become sacramental to the soul in unison with him. 
Nothing can separate, nothing can destroy, nothing can ^eally 
injure — nothing but our own wayward will. 

IV 

The inner change through the reign of Christ in the human 
spirit is fundamentally a change in moral tendency — a new 
tendency in the direction of being and not merely in appear- 
ing to be ; of purifying motive as well as action ; revaluating 
success as giving and not as getting; emphasizing quality in 
actions rather than bulk or quantity; communicating spiritual 
reality as fundamentally important. This change in inner 
tendency is at first an invisible thing, and even when visible 
it is still in the disguise of being an uninfluential thing. This 
new Christian tendency in life can never be estimated at its 
real worth, for men are looking for the materially impressive, 
for certain preconceived marks of greatness and importance. 
They are looking for bigness, gilt and glitter, impressive 
names, and the outward show which they think must always 
accompany power. For we are still in the kindergarten asJ:o 
the recognition of spiritual reality. And because of this, 
Christian people are supremely tempted to answer men's ex- 
pectations by substituting the show of things for the realities. 
Is not this just the point at which Christianity has again and 
again surrendered to the expectations of the carnal mind and 
has in consequence been shorn of its power? 

If Christians are to give Christ his chance in our day for 
the remaking of society, must it not be through a return to a 
reemphasis of what is really spiritual progress? Why should 
we shape our lives according to the roar in the street 
instead of daring to live according to the mind of Christ? 
Does it not seem that the supreme need for the new day 
which is at hand is for us as Christian people really to risk 
the mind of Christ amid the facts of life; to cease to follow 
and to begin to lead, not in the spirit of self-aggression, but 
in obedience to the tendencies of the indwelling life of Christ? 
Who will say the Church has been leading? She may have 
been politic, but has she been powerful? 



94 



CHAPTER X 

The Release from Anxiety 

DAILY READINGS 
Tenth Week, First Day : The Fact of Anxiety 

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate 
the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to one, 
and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. 
— Matt. 6: 24. 

When two forces cancel each other, whether it be in a boat 
where two men row in opposite directions, or in a life in 
which two opposite ambitions tend to paralyze each other, 
there is a condition which may be called anxious. For there 
can be no real progress, while there may be a great deal of 
effort. There can be no real satisfaction, although there may 
be a vast longing to secure it. There can be no joy, although 
this double .position may be the blind way of trying to at- 
tain it. 

The secret of the unrest and unhappiness in many a life is 
this attempt to have two dominating purposes, two conflicting 
ideals, reigning in the mind at the same time. There is a 
continual, or periodic, shifting from one aim to the other. It 
is a condition of being neither cold nor hot, the condition of 
the Laodiceans. "I know thy works, that thou art neither 
cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot." If one or other 
of the aims were to surrender, then there would be compara- 
tive rest. The fact is, a purely worldly person may have 
more real satisfaction of a kind than one who is in a con- 
tinual attitude of compromise. We are so constituted that 
our life must be dominated by one ruling passion. It may 
have very many interests, but not two contending motives. 

How may we begin now to have one dominating motive? 

95 



[X-2] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

Tenth Week, Second Day: Causes o£ the Anxious 
Attitude 

And there ariseth a great storm of wind, and the waves 
beat into the boat, insomuch that the boat was now filling. 
And he himself was in the stern, asleep on the cushion: 
and they awake him, and say unto him, Teacher, carest 
thou not that we perish? And he awoke and rebuked the 
wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind 
ceased, and there was a great calm. And he said unto 
them, Why are ye fearful? have ye not yet faith? And 
they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, Who 
then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him? — 
Mark 4: 37-41. 

One cause of having two convicting ideals, or aims, is a 
false idea of our responsibility. A great many people think 
that certain very important things in life are in their own 
hands, and that they must look after them. They carry a 
burden which God never intended they should carry. Con- 
sequently they became anxious ; they are not merely concerned 
with doing what they have in hand with all their might, but 
they worry about the consequences of it. For example, a 
politician may know what he ought to do, but he worries how 
it will affect votes. A preacher may know what he ought to 
say, but he also becomes greatly concerned as to how people 
will take it. One has a certain duty, but he keeps wondering 
as to how much happiness is coming out of' the doing of it. 
Living partly in the thing now to be done, and partly in the 
consequences of doing it, is a frequent cause of being harried 
by two dominating motives. And the cause of this condition 
may be fear, a fear of individuals, or of the world, or of the 
forces of nature. Fear arises from the picturing of a dis- 
astrous result. One who fears is trying to do his work, but 
he is also under the cruel lash of what is going to happen. 
He is permitting his imagination to visualize discouraging and 
paralyzing consequences, while the rest of him is trying to 
push on with the task. In this way one's greatest enemy is 
within the household of his own bisected personality. 

What most frequently causes us anxiety? 

Tenth Week, Third Day: The Unanxious Attitude 

And now, behold, I go bound in the spirit unto Jerusa- 
lem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there: 

96 






THE RELEASE FROM ANXIETY [X-4] 

save that the Holy Spirit testifieth unto me in every city, 
saying that bonds and afflictions abide me. But I hold 
not my life of any account as dear unto myself, so that I 
may accomplish my course, and the ministry which I re- 
ceived from the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the 
grace of God. — Acts 20: 22-24. 

A Christian is in an unanxious attitude, when his whole per- 
sonality is focused upon doing the will of Christ. The mind, 
resolutely refusing^ to be taken up with irrelevant suggestions 
or secondary considerations, steadily moves forward to 
achieve its task, with oneness of aim, concentration of pur- 
pose, passionate absorption in the mind of Christ. "This one 
thing I do." Things right enough in themselves have been 
pushed to one side in the meantime. They do not count for 
the moment. They are not in the immediate calculation. 
They must take their chances later on for weal or woe. 
Meanwhile, it is one thing at a time. "I can do no other, so 
help me God." 

In this attitude there is the courageous running of risks 
concerning everything except the will of Christ. Just as 
freight trains must wait at sidings, and automobiles at cross- 
ings, and linemen must stand by the side of the railway, till 
the express sweeps past, so in the Christian unanxious atti- 
tude there is one supreme purpose which has the right of way. 

This bearing carries at the heart of it a great joy and peace 
and power. The whole of J.ife is thereby automatically sim- 
plified. That docs not mean fewness of interests — there may 
be an increasing number, one may be making the most com- 
plex connections with the needs of the world — but there is 
only one fundamental concern. 

What is one of the immediate results of this attitude? 

Tenth Week, Fourth Day: What the Unanxious 
Attitude Does Not Mean 

To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among 
the Gentiles; straightway I conferred not with flesh and 
blood: neither went I up to Jerusalem to them that were 
apostles before me: but I went away into Arabia; and 
again I returned unto Damascus. 

Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit 
Cephas, and tarried with him fifteen days. — Gai. 1: 16-18. 

97 



[X-5] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

The only point I wish to emphasize here is that the Chris- 
tian unanxious attitude does not imply the absence of plans 
for the future. There are some who vindicate themselves in 
a policy of happy-go-lucky carelessness. The result is that 
other people besides themselves have to suffer for their false 
interpretations of Christ. They are slipshod, unpunctual, or 
it may be they do not believe in such a thing as insurance, 
or in any settled plans whatsoever. That is not the fulfilment 
of the mind of Christ — it is the delusion of a mood. Christ's 
whole relation to the world has a definite Comprehensive plan 
at the heart of it. And he has had a cosmic plan in the 
process of being fulfilled by his disciples, stretching from age 
to age. Besides, the very relation of Christ to the human 
mind implies the making of clear, wise plans, because he is 
always insisting upon concentration of mind, and that upon 
which he challenges our concentration is part of a plan. His 
is not a disconnected, unrelated suggestion. The enemy of a 
plan is not a concentrated mind, but a muddled mind, a mind 
becoming the victim of stray impressions. The mind which 
refuses to be amenable to a plan is likely to be one which 
has thrown over the rigors of discipline. 

On the other hand, let us bear in mind at the same time 
while the healthy Christian mind may recognize the place of 
plans in life he may not submit to your plan, or mine. We 
may not coerce our fellows into subjection to our scheme. 
One is Master, even Christ. 

Are plans or the mind of Christ primary? 

Tenth Week, Fifth Day: Unanxious Regarding 
Spiritual Growth 

For which cause I suffer also these things: yet I am not 
ashamed; for I know him whom I have believed, and I 
am persuaded that he is able to guard that which I have 
committed unto him against that day. — II Tim. i: 12. 

When a farmer fulfils the conditions, it is the business of 
nature to produce the harvest. He clearly recognizes the limits 
of his responsibility. A child who plants a seed in a flower pot, 
on the other hand, interferes with nature by digging up the 
seed an hour or two afterwards to see if it is growing. Paul 
was like the farmer, he left the problem of the growth of 
his spiritual life in the hands of his Lord, while he in perfect 

98 



THE RELEASE FROM ANXIETY [X-6] . 

confidence went about his particular business of fulfilling the 
conditions. He carried the burden Christ gave him, and he 
left the burden that was not his to Him who had pledged 
himself to carry it. When one lives in this relation to Christ, 
he is thereby free from worrying about his soul and its 
growth. He does not think his spiritual development is a 
small matter, it is because it is so vastly important that he 
puts the problem in other hands than his own — just as you 
transfer the keeping of valuables from your own care to the 
custody of another. 

But there are some who are like the child, they still carry 
the burden for their spiritual growth even after they have 
fulfilled the conditions of worship and obedience. The con- 
sequence is they are never particularly joyous people, for they 
are constantly worried as to how their souls are getting along. 
They are all the time searching for symptoms as to how they 
are progressing spiritually. They take their spiritual tem- 
perature, then feel their spiritual pulse, and when that sort 
of thing goes on for a while they lose heart. For this hectic 
condition stops the growth of their souls. 

If many earnest people would leave the growth of their 
souls in the keeping of the Lord of life, they would have more 
freedom to serve with gladness of heart. 

When may the unanxious attitude regarding spiritual 
growth be practiced? 

Tenth Week, Sixth Day: Unanxious Regarding 
Influence 

Here, moreover, it is required in stewards, that a man 
be found faithful. But with me it is a very small thing 
that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment: yea, 
I judge not mine own self. For I know nothing against 
myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth 
me is the Lord. Wherefore judge nothing before the time, 
until the Lord come, who will both bring to light the 
hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels 
of the hearts; and then shall each man have his praise 
from God. — I Cor. 4: 2-5. 

To be concerned about fidelity is one thing, to be anxious 
about influence is another thing. Influence of the right sort 
is always a by-product of fidelity. Of course, we are not here 

99 



. [X-7l UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

discussing that type of so-called influence which issues from 
pulling all kinds of strings. The influence of which we are 
thinking is that glorious product which haunts a life uncon- 
scious of itself in the service of the Master. 

It is a precious, beautiful, powerful thing. But Christ takes 
charge of it, he fosters it, he protects it. The Christian dis- 
ciple dare not try to meddle with it. It is not his affair. 
Whenever he touches it he soils it. There are some good 
people who do not realize that influence is something which 
is not in their keeping. Consequently they are burdened by 
the appalling anxiety to make an impression — not necessarily 
in a conceited way, but it may be simply in an over-zealous 
attempt to reach others for good. They try too hard. They 
may become artificially unctuous. They may be extravagantly 
and oppressively sympathetic. They exhaust people. What 
is. the matter? They are not leaving anything for Christ to 
do. They think the whole burden of fidelity and the creation 
of influence rests upon them. It is a frightful strain. The 
strain of anxiety for influence is- self-imposed. It is not the 
result of faith, but of unbelief in the vigilant activity of 
Christ. Christ never imposed so galling a burden. His yoke 
is easy. His burden is light. 

Have we been more concerned for influence or for fidelity? 

Tenth Week, Seventh Day: Unanxious Regarding 
Happiness 

Howbeit what things were gain to me, these have I 
counted loss for Christ. Yea verily, and I count all things 
to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ 
Jesus my Lord: for whom I suffered the loss of all things, 
and do count them but refuse, that I may gain Christ. — 
Phil. 3: 7, 8. 

The highest type of Christians have been the most joyous 
people in the world ; nothing in all literature compares with 
the story of their triumphant gladness of heart in the midst 
of the most hostile circumstances. The secret of it is that 
they lost sight of the thought of happiness, their thoughts lay 
in an entirely different direction. They sought Christ and his 
will, encountering in that quest the appearance of all kinds 
of unhappiness. If they had trusted appearances they would 
have said "good-by" to happiness for ever. But none of those 

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THE RELEASE FROM ANXIETY [X-c] 

things moved them. By losing their lives they found them, 
by scorning the pursuit of happiness they discovered the 
fountain-head of it. 

The vast majority have not yet learned the great secret that 
happiness, like influence, is a by-product. Consequently they 
are still pursuing it along the highway of appearances, and 
none are more disillusioned than those who have made it their 
supreme business to hunt for happiness. For it can never be 
caught. Besides, it wears a disguise. Men shrink from that 
disguise. It looks forbidding. Even a philosopher like Plato 
could not see that life's highest joys came through self- 
sacrifice. 

The Christian testimony is, that in self-effacing attachment 
to the mind of Christ the purest kind of satisfaction flings 
itself upon those who have ignored and forgotten the thirst 
for happiness. 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 



When we stray from Christ anxiety deepens and one of 
the commonest, and most practical, forms of it is concerning 
the future. How shall the difficult task be achieved tomor- 
row? Dare one take the right step without apprehension as 
to the consequences? A strange undefined fear steals over 
the personality like a biting blast from the North. It moans 
through the hours of the night, it whistles through the duties 
of the day. It descends upon the garden of life like frost- 
bite upon the fair promises of fruit. It might be a bracing 
tonic if it aroused sluggish energies. But the pity of it is that 
the anxious man is already weakened by tomorrow before he 
sees it. Tomorrow has injured or destroyed his today. 
Anxiety over what is coming has taken the reality out of 
what is in hand. There can be no clear light upon the next 
step until there is concentration upon what one is now doing. 
There can be no future until there is a definite present to 
which one gives his soul. This hour belongs to us, and if we 
do not possess it, we shall possess no other. 

Anxiety defeats the very end it has in view — it not only robs 
us of our preparation to accomplish what awaits us, but it 
consumes the interest and power demanded by the pressing 
needs of the moment. 

IOI 



[X-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

But the presence of Christ dominating the mind in the pres- 
ent, guards the personality against the invasion of tomorrow. 
He and his zvill are our tomorrow. And in that attitude we 
have both present victory and the promise of future achieve- 
ment. Christ preserves and focuses the energies in the pres- 
ent, which is the supreme preparation for whatever may hap- 
pen. The person who is waiting for something to turn up 
cannot really be prepared for what may present itself, while 
he who is turning up something in the present is being 
equipped for the next thing. When we pursue our own 
anxious way we are simply rushing into collision with the 
divine order, with the most damaging consequences ; whereas 
when we recognize that the future is not our burden but our 
Leader's, we move in the rhythm of the divine purpose. 

II 

Of course, this unanxious attitude towards our spiritual 
growth, our influence, our happiness, and our future pre- 
supposes some clear convictions. It implies that we are defi- 
nitely fulfilling those conditions which give us the right to 
trust Christ confidently to do his great part in us and through 
us. It implies that we have firmly assured ourselves that we 
are not living in a fool's paradise of mere apathetic uncon- 
cern, making the vice of indifference to appear as the virtue 
of invincible faith. This glorious outlook of the Christian 
Soul takes for granted that Christ is increasingly real to us. 
We are becoming more intimate with him ; the friendship, on 
the whole, is growing. We are taking the time to cultivate 
it. Meditation, prayer, worship on the one hand, and obedi- 
ence to our Master's will in the detail of daily life, are rec- 
ognized as the fundamental facts in the relationship. Without 
this, the unanxious attitude becomes presumption. It becomes 
the equivalent of casting ourselves down from the pinnacle 
of the Temple and trusting that he will give his angels 
charge concerning us. Trust has vast privileges, but it has 
simple duties. It can look its Lord straight in the face only 
as it does its part, or, having failed in doing its part, comes 
back in penitence to begin afresh. But Christ will not lend 
himself to a one-sided attitude. Ethical reality is the life's 
blood of the gracious and spiritual bond between him and 
ourselves. Let us never forget that spiritual relations are 

102 



THE RELEASE FROM ANXIETY [X-c] 

not the substitute for ethical relations — they are the trans- 
figuration of them. Divine grace is not a good-natured 
ethical surrender on the part of our Lord. "Shall we con- 
tinue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid." Christ 
takes charge of those burdens which make us heavy with 
anxiety, not to liberate us from moral obligation, but in order 
thereby to make our fulfilment of his will all the more a 
triumphant moral achievement. The government looks after 
the equipment of a soldier, not that he may lie down in indo- 
lence, but that he may all the better with freedom of action 
fulfil his destiny. 

The unanxions relation to Christ concerning spiritual 
growth, influence, happiness, and the future implies that there 
is one creative reality which is the maker and protector of 
these other created realities. 

The creative reality being His presence and will in us, it 
is our business to give -this reality its opportunity to produce 
its own fruit. We cannot make fruit, but we can cooperate with 
nature in producing it. I see great clusters of grapes silently 
growing outside, but not all the skill of mankind could directly 
create one of them. And yet we try to create greater things 
than grapes. Just as nature will do for us in the richest 
abundance what we cannot possibly do for ourselves, so will 
Christ do for us when we recognize that it is his function 
and not ours. But we confuse the situation. We assume re- 
sponsibility for the spiritual fruit as well as root of our lives, 
so that what nature does in a garden Christ is hindered from 
doing in a character. We try to manufacture fruit instead of 
letting it grow. Besides assuming the responsibility which 
legitimately belongs to us, we meddle with a problem that is 
immeasurably beyond us. 

This simply means that there are many important issues in 
life, but one main issue. There is one primary fact out of 
which the rest naturally emerge. The fireman on a locomo- 
tive sees that there is enough water in the boiler and that 
the coal is glowing in the furnace, and steam, power is the 
result. Nature looks after the production of steam. The 
fireman looks after the conditions to be fulfilled. And as 
nature never fails, so Christ will not fail in the part he has 
pledged himself to play. 

This unanxious attitude further implies that we are pre- 
pared to bide Christ's time for the complete vindication of 

103 



[X-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

our trust that he is doing his part. "It doth not yet appear 
what we shall be." We do not see our souls growing, and 
we may not feel them progressing. Nevertheless, if we really 
have committed them to him we have perfect confidence that, 
as we fulfil conditions, they are flourishing under his care. 
We are trusting him, not our symptoms. We are walking by 
faith and not by sight. You do not see the securities you have 
placed in a safe deposit vault. You do not consult your feel- 
ings as to whether they are safe. You simply trust, on 
reasonable guarantees, and that is the sole basis of your 
patient, waiting confidence. So in regard to the growth of 
our souls, we are confident that when he shall appear we 
shall be like him. "As for me, I will behold thy face in 
righteousness : I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy 
likeness." 

Our influence, too, through abiding in him may not appear 
to amount to much. If we judged it according to appear- 
ances, we might be greatly discouraged. But appearances are 
not necessarily facts. Far greater men have been undis- 
couraged by appearances. If Paul had worried about the out- 
ward appearances of his influence among men, it would have 
broken "his great heart. It would have frozen over his enthu- 
siasm. But he committed the care of his influence to his 
Master, and went about the concerns that belonged to him. 
How many sleepless nights good people might be spared if 
they left the keeping of their influence where it belonged, 
and were unmoved v by appearances. "He shall bring forth 
thy righteousness as the light." 

Ill 

The consequences of the unanxious attitude are far-reach- 
ing beyond words, and in many directions. We have hardly 
any conception as to how we arrest our spiritual development 
by our unwarrantable meddlings with ourselves. Morbid self- 
suspicion and self-analysis work havoc in spiritual as well as 
in physical health. But the unanxious bearing gives Christ 
the opportunity in which he glories. It is in this way we leave 
ourselves in his care. He gets on with his work, and con- 
tinuity of growth becomes possible. It is like allowing seeds 
to remain at rest in the ground in the grip of nature, instead 
of driving a harrow over them, uprooting them. There is a 

104 



THE RELEASE FROM ANXIETY [X-cI 

new epoch of normal, continuous, quiet progress awaiting a 
new implicit trust that there is Another on the inner problem 
besides ourselves. 

It is also in this way that joyousness has its opportunity to 
rise within. It is ghostly fear which silences the instinctive 
songs of the soul. There are tides of gladness within us 
whose waves never refresh the personality into newness of 
strength, because they are held back by barriers of futile 
anxiety. There is so much of the joy of the Lord within us 
awaiting the opportunity to express itself in ways that would 
make for more power and delight in living, even among the 
most difficult circumstances. When the spell of anxious re- 
pression is withdrawn there rises out of the silence a new 
song, like that of a skylark which has escaped from a harsh 
hand. 

The tragedy in the soul's history of many good people is 
that they are living in the winter of their discontent, when 
they might be living in the springtime of a glorious experi- 
ence. If only the clouds of distrust were broken, new graces 
of character would flower in the sunlight of Christ's presence, 
as blossoms cover the branches of the tree that only yesterday 
were bare and without promise. And, as apostolic life bears 
witness, this is possible not merely in aloofness from the 
work of the world, but in the thick of the struggle. There 
are thousands of men and women today who know the mean- 
ing of casting all their care upon Him, in the midst of sorrow 
upon sorrow, who never knew the meaning of it in all the 
sheltered, prosperous, peaceful past. 



105 



CHAPTER XI 



The Economic Value of the 
New Life 



DAILY READINGS 

Eleventh Week, First Day: The New Simplicity 
of Desire 

Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, 
in whatsoever state I am, therein to be content. I know 
how to be abased, and I know also how to abound: in 
everything and in all things have I learned the secret both 
to be filled and to be hungry, both to abound and to be 
in want. — Phil. 4: 11, 12. 

Real Christianity in a life tends towards the reduction of 
physical cravings — not in an ascetic sense, but through trans- 
formed interest. It creates a shrinkage in certain appetites. 
For example, it counteracts gluttony, tippling, impure desire, 
indolence. It shifts the emphasis of desire away from physi- 
cal impulses, and tends to place the emphasis elsewhere. That 
is to say, when one lives in genuine fellowship with Christ, 
there takes place a readjustment of his economic value. 

When he lived apart from Christ he demanded more from 
society than he now claims. It may be he demanded more 
than he gave, which, of course, is economically unsound. At 
any rate, in every personality where Christ gets his way, there 
is a continual movement towards the simplification of certain 
forms of desire. If every man lived as the instincts of the 
divine life urge, there would be an immediate change in the 
entire economic situation. I do not mean to infer that all 
the change that should come has come. But can there be any 
permanent solution of economic conditions without clearly 
facing the problem of the fundamental readjustment of the 

106 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF NEW LIFE [XI-2J 

individual to the whole? And this is something which can 
take place today. While other questions are under discussion, 
there are immediate practical changes which may take place 
within our own lives, without which every other change on 
the outside must prove to be futile. 

Eleventh Week, Second Day: The New Humility 

Doing nothing through faction or through vainglory, but 
in lowliness of mind each counting other better than him- 
self; not looking each of you to his own things, but each 
of you also to the things of others. — Phil. 2 : 3, 4. 

Christian humility is the opposite of self-consciousness. 
There is a spurious humility which is self-conscious and it 
may express itself outwardly in the form of slovenly shabbi- 
ness or by a certain type of dress or way of living. True 
humility makes no display of self by one kind of ostentation 
or another. It does not call attention to itself. The thoughts 
of the humble mind have been captured by Christ in an 
enthusiasm to forget self in following him. It does not 
cringe, for the cringing temper is painfully self-conscious. 
Humility in this majestic attitude of freedom from the 
thought of self realizes a far-reaching economic result. For 
the really humble do not complicate the social situation by 
mere display in clothes, or in anything else. The motive for 
display has been converted and absorbed into higher ends. 
Thus genuine humility tend& to enable a person to give to 
society more than he asks from it. Is there anything which 
complicates the social situation more than personal pride? 
Is there anything which is so hungry for still more upon 
which to feed its antisocial appetite? Is there anything which 
so introduces trouble into the social fabric as trying to con- 
quer other people by an attitude of ostentatious display? 
There can be no adequate approach to social equilibrium until 
we learn the meaning of the words, "Learn of me, for I am 
meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your 
souls." 

Eleventh Week, Third Day : The New Efficiency 

That ye put away, as concerning your former manner 
of life, the old man, that waxeth corrupt after the lusts of 
deceit; and that ye be renewed in the spirit of your mind, 

107 



IXI-4] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

and put on the new man, that after God hath been created 
in righteousness and holiness of truth. — Eph. 4: 22-24. 

Christ does for the Christian mind two things among many 
others which have an economic significance. He concentrates 
the thoughts, and he encourages the mind to think through 
its problems. For he is continually guarding the mind against 
surrender to mere distraction and curiosity. Mental concen- 
tration and continuance have a great deal to do with efficiency 
and thoroughness. When we sift economic unprofitableness 
down to its foundation, we discover that it arises in a large 
degree from lack of those two qualities. There is infinitely 
greater economic loss through mental inattention and shifti- 
ness than through lack of talent. 

The steadied mind summons the whole personality to its 
task, and finishes it. It is the enemy of loose ends. It is the 
sworn foe of indolent dreaming. If that attitude of mind 
could be guaranteed in every worker, think of the great 
•economic increase of work. Think of the loss that might 
never take place through fires, breakage, accidents of all 
kinds, expensive blunders, and what not. Think of the things 
that would not require to be done over again, by those who 
must follow up the careless. Besides, there is the contagion 
of carelessness, and happily the contagion of efficient thor- 
oughness. 

Do I render to my duties that concentration and thorough- 
ness which make for economic soundness? 



Eleventh Week, Fourth Day: The New Conscien- 
tiousness 

Wherefore, putting away falsehood, speak ye truth each 
one with his neighbor: for we are members one of another. 
Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon 
your wrath: neither give place to the devil. Let him that 
stole steal no more : but rather let him labor, working with 
his hands the thing that is good, that he may have 
whereof to give to him that hath need. — Eph. 4: 25-28. 

A Christian conscience can do in a business what time locks, 
detectives, superintendents, and auditors cannot search out. 
It can fundamentally do more than legislation, for it first of 
all gets after the legislator, and. it follows up his legislation 

108 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF NEW LIFE [XI-5I 

as no policeman can do. It can get more into the heart of 
things than the X-ray machine. It can penetrate further into 
a problem than any human contrivance. It can keep shoddy 
out of materials, adulteration out of food, water out of stock, 
doubleness out of life, eye-service out of working hours. It 
can keep injustice out of the board room and the workroom. 

Granting that there is need for social renewal, is there any- 
thing in the social fabric which can take the place of a new 
personal conscientiousness? There must always be disease 
spots in the body politic where conscience does not reign in 
life. 

Let us recognize and honor the economic service which 
men and women render, who, in their present lot, are living 
up to and beyond the moral standards and conventions of 
their surroundings. They are doing their part in laying the 
foundations for a better social order, without which no social 
order can endure. 

Are we thus working at the center as well as the circum- 
ference of social facts? 

Eleventh Week, Fifth Day : The New Ambition 

But it is not so among you: but whosoever would be- 
come great among you, shall be your minister; and who- 
soever would be first among you, shall be servant of all. 
For the Son of man also came not to be ministered unto, 
but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. — 
Mark 10: 43-45- 

There is vast need for us to find an aim in life that will 
be sufficiently powerful to command the fullest energy of the 
human faculties and that at the same time will make for 
the fullest social justice to our fellows. We are surely pass- 
ing beyond" an individualism which has honored individual 
success without considering the economic injustice it may 
have wrought. 

Christ has a great place for the expansion of personality 
through a sublime aim, but he has no place for personal am- 
bition which tends to make equality of opportunity impossible. 

The Christian ambition is not to "get on" — it is to serve, 
and to serve, having the glory of God as a supreme motive* 
Such service will probably "get on." But the point is that 
Christ seeks to rearrange our emphasis. He seeks to make 

109 



[XI-6] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

life's supreme glory to consist in serving and not in being 
served, in self-sacrifice and not in what one has amassed or 
seeks to amass — whether it be a fortune or fame or power. 
The ambition which puts any personal advantage in front of 
service is anti-Christian, it is economically unsound. It does 
not matter whether it be in an individual life, a church, or 
a business. 

Is my secret ambition economically sound? 

Eleventh Week, Sixth Day: The New Health 

And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin; 
but the spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the 
Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth 
in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall 
give life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit that 
dwelleth in you. — Rom. 8: 10, n. 

While some great saints have been great invalids, tat the 
same time the presence of Christ in a life impels toward the 
increase of physical health. For there is a direct tendency 
towards health in the control of physical cravings. Think of 
the vast shrinkage in sickness that would take place if physi- 
cal appetites were really under divine influence. The regula- 
tion of the thoughts which Christ seeks to direct into chan- 
nels of healthymindedness has a far-reaching implication 
towards physical health. 

More than one nerve specialist has told me that his great 
difficulty with many patients is the problem of uncontrolled 
thought. The absence of fear, the casting out of anxiety, the 
curbing of unrest arising from unbridled ambition, all make 
for health. The sense of forgiveness and of the divine pres- 
ence and power, the sanguine spirit, the steadied imagination, 
communicate tone even to the body. 

The conquering spiritual energy which wrestles with indo- 
lence, moods, and discouragements, and the faith which lays 
hold upon spiritual power, literally quicken the mortal body. 
The spiritual life, dominating and reenforcing the physical 
life, thereby proclaims such ascendancy to be a great economic 
asset. 

Does my Christianity get sufficient opportunity to express 
itself in terms of physical health? 

no 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF NEW LIFE [XI-7J 

Eleventh Week, Seventh Day: The New Compre- 
hensive Economic Value 

For bodily exercise is profitable for a little; but godli- 
ness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life 
which now is, and of that which is to come. Faithful is the 
saying, and worthy of all acceptation. For to this end 
we labor and strive, because we have our hope set on the 
living God, who is the Saviour of all men, especially of 
them that believe. — I Tim. 4: 8-10. 

The really spiritual life tends to express itself in an all- 
round practical efficiency. The whole movement of the divine 
life in the human spirit is in the direction of increasing one's 
social value in every direction. There is nothing which can 
take its place, when the all-inclusiveness of the Christian im- 
pulse is considered. For the influence of Christ is a consistent 
whole. It does not cancel at one point what it emphasizes at 
another, like a non-spiritual efficiency, which may be brilliant 
but unscrupulous, concentrated but cruelly ambitious. 

The economic value of a non-religious efficiency in one 
direction may be completely discounted by lack of conscience 
in another. It may be far more than discounted; the result 
in this sum of economic subtraction may be an alarming 
minus quantity. That is why the public is becoming more 
and more inquisitive regarding the other side of the question 
of a man's public philanthropy. 

But where Christ reigns there will be a balance, a propor- 
tion, a consistency, in the economic contribution. . If Christ 
gets the chance he seeks in a life, it becomes the seed plot of 
symmetrical economic progress. 

Is my life consistent in its economic relationships? 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 

I 

If the spiritually careless man could see how far-reaching 
were the social effects of his carelessness, he would have a 
new motive for spiritual concern. At present too many see it 
to be merely a matter of their own business whether they 
pray, or cultivate in any way relations with the eternal world. 
They think nobody is affected but themselves in the attitude 
which they take up. But of course this is not the case. If 

in 



[XI-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

spiritual living has an economic value, then the lack of it is 
a distinct economic loss. 

Every prayerless life, and every prayerless day, work out 
badly for society. Every spiritual disobedience is a handicap 
upon the practical life of the world. For example, whenever a 
man comes to the breakfast table without previous devotional 
refreshment, he is more liable to uncertain moods, to ill- 
temper, to complaining, to depression and discouragement. 
He affects the whole household. He goes out having his per- 
sonality out of tune with the highest progress, and that atti- 
tude consciously or unconsciously goes into what he does, 
and how he does it, and the seeds of it are sown broadcast. 
There is no human mathematics which can compute the 
blighting influence of a personality out of relation with the 
divine mind. That such influence has serious economic con- 
sequences is beyond question. Would you say that one who 
discouraged others through lack of personal faith and opti- 
mism did not work against their economic efficiency? You 
have only to consider how discouragement has affected your 
own life. It reduced your working power. It clouded your 
mental vision. It robbed you of the joy which was a distinct 
element in your moral capital. That discouragement actually 
reduced your economic output. 

When you consider the c'ase of a positively bad life, in 
which overt acts reach others with damaging effectiveness, 
then the uneconomic consequences become frightful. There 
is let loose upon society that which becomes an increasing 
social burden, piling up the sum of human misery. 

If the natural history of an evil act could be clearly fol- 
lowed, and revealed to the evildoer's intelligence, as its activ- 
ity still goes forward into the life of the world long after he 
lias forgotten it, there would be started a new train of thought 
in his mind regarding the relation between individual spiritual 
condition and the practical corporate life of mankind. 

II 

But in considering the economic bearing of the individual 
life, it is not enough to be content with the fulfilment of cer- 
tain religious practices. It is possible for one to read the 
Bible and to pray and yet to come before the world with an 
unrenewed personality. That is why some have lost faith in 

112 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF NEW LIFE [XI-c] 

th: devotional aspect of life. They have not observed that 
it has made much difference in the conduct of their friends. 
Of course, the trouble is that some people simply make those 
acts of religious practice ends in themselves, and consequently 
defeat Christ in his aim to reach and renew the inner life. 
Christ's actual power does not get its opportunity to reach 
the character. The vital contact has not been made. The 
husk has been taken for the kernel. The scaffolding has 
been substituted for the building. The form has been mis- 
taken for the power. The result is that at least two wrongs 
have been perpetrated. The life has not been renewed. It 
has been cheated out of its spiritual refreshment. It has 
failed to receive its equipment for making its full economic 
contribution. And, besides, people are watching who have 
thus been robbed of their faith in the practical value of the 
spiritual life. 

It is therefore of the most urgent and vital importance that 
professing Christian people press beyond the vestibule of 
spiritual reality to the presence of Christ, if their lives are to 
possess that economic value Christ meant them to impart. 
For there is no final economic value in mere religiosity. The 
divine life must reach us at the focus point of our character. 
The actual spiritual power must reach our weakness. 

There is no substitute for the infusion of divine life into 
the human spirit. Christianity must be real there or it can 
be real nowhere. That is the climax of all its history and 
machinery. That is the fountain-head of its social renewal. 

Ill 

Jesus put the supreme emphasis for the coming of the 
Kingdom of God upon the spiritually renewed individual, 
and not only the individual but the individual leader. 

He looked to an inner circle of regenerated persons whom 
he instructed to be leaders and he trusted them as the supreme 
means whereby all change should be effected. 

The reformer who says he puts the supreme emphasis for his 
hope of social change upon social conditions, contradicts his 
own position, for he makes his protest as an individual. For 
it is only as individuals like himself reach social conditions 
that there can be change. Without the individual leaders to 
realize it, there is, no real social progress. That is surely a 

113 



[XI-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

matter of historic fact. So then Christ's method of expecting 
advance to come primarily through the Christian leader is the 
supreme way. It is not the only way, but it is primary. 

The individual leader who seeks to affect the social situa- 
tion may try two methods in order to achieve his purpose. 
He may stand outside of it, as it were, and try to change it 
as a fireman endeavors to put out a fire. Standing outside 
of it, the fireman guides a torrent of water upon the flames. 
So there are men and women who seek to help society by 
looking upon themselves as outside the conditions with which 
they seek to deal. But on the other hand, there is the totally 
different way of helping society by recognizing that the worker 
himself is part of the social problem. He sees himself as 
part of the fire to be put out, as it were. He cannot detach 
himself as if all his own personal problems had nothing to 
do with the social situation, while he simply deals with social 
conditions. 

It is this latter way which is Christ's way. He says to the 
leader whom he seeks to lead : "You are part of the social 
organism which you seek to change, and if you are to change 
it you must yourself be changed." The individual who pur- 
sues Christ's way of changing the world is all the time being 
changed in his own inner life. He does not, he cannot, ignore 
the fact that his own character and life and problems are just 
as much a part of the situation as those of other people. He 
recognizes that it would be great foolishness to work for the 
redemption of society, if his own case were not being attended 
to at the same time. 

It is just here that a good deal of confusion arises. There 
are large numbers of well meaning people who are completely 
satisfied because they, are doing good work. But the unfortu- 
nate thing is that what they are trying to do in society has 
not yet been achieved in themselves. They are seeking, let 
us say, economic soundness in their community, but they 
themselves are not living in an attitude of economic sound- 
ness towards society. They are trying to drive the weeds out 
of the garden of society, but while they toil at the task they 
are dropping through holes in their pockets seeds of those 
very weeds which they are busy uprooting. It may be even 
worse than that. I have heard men rail against our present 
social order in such a spirit of unbridled vindictiveness, that 
unless they were greatly changed in their own inner life they 

114 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF NEW LIFE [XI-c] 

would turn the Utopia for which they were laboring into an 
inferno of hate. 

In seeking the realization of the world's new day, Christ 
lays the stress primarily upon individual renewal, that each 
may bring to the corporate life that personal soundness which 
is the guarantee of larger renewal. Christ challenges each 
renewed life to become a propagandist, a leader, for such a life 
has a secret, a message, a contribution which is of vital im- 
portance to the life of the whole world. 

IV 

While it is true that the supreme emphasis is laid by Christ 
upon the sound contribution which the individual makes to 
the world, it is also true that economic conditions have an im- 
portant effect upon the individual. Large numbers of people are 
stunted by an economic fear. They are afraid of the con- 
sequences of being sick, of losing their position, of the fierce 
competition with which they have to contend, of the problem 
of a subsistence. While it is true that the triumph of the 
Spirit of Christ in a life will mean a great victory over 
economic fears, it is also true that Christ has a vast interest 
in the conditions under which men and women live. It is 
quite true he had a kind of contempt for physical comfort, 
and he taught his disciples to have no fear of pain or death ; 
at the same time he had a passionate enthusiasm for the cause 
of the poor and the oppressed. He taught that men were the 
providence of God to men, that for men to ignore the op- 
pressive conditions under which their fellows lived was to 
earn the certain judgment of God. 

Since the Spirit of Christ is the spirit of a great compassion, 
and since the Spirit of Christ moves towards corporate ex- 
pression, therefore it must carry that corporate compassion 
against the citadel of corporate injustice wherever it exists. 
Jesus voiced that temper when he said of Herod: "Go tell 
that fox." He had national personalities in his mind. When 
he exposed the Pharisees he had false national tendencies as 
the object of his denunciation. But he never surrendered his 
cause to any mere social system. He carried the whole of his 
program into the human situation. He never retreated from 
the supreme facts — God, the soul, and human destiny. 



115 



CHAPTER XII 

The Individual Contribution 
to Progress 

DAILY READINGS 
Twelfth Wefek, First Day: Personal Atmosphere 

And they said one to another, Was not our heart burning 
within us, while he spake to us in the way, while he 
opened to us the scriptures? And they rose up that very 
hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven 
gathered together, and them that were with them. — Luke 
24: 32, 33. 

Is not this the very first point of contact between an in- 
dividual and the world in which he lives? It is not primarily 
what he says, or even what he may try to achieve, but the 
atmosphere he unconsciously exhales, which is the immediate 
impact upon others. It is a powerful social fact for good or 
evil. Some people, apart altogether from the value of their 
words, or even actions, produce in us a cleansing, liberating, 
healing influence. We go from their presence at our best. 
There are others from whom we go fettered, silent, depressed, 
and not at our best. 

Every one of us is unconsciously exerting some such power, 
for there is no escape from it. We are all drawing the world 
upward, or dragging it downward, according to the atmos- 
phere which goes out from us. 

It is the inner condition which throws off this by-product. 
And our inner condition may be changed according as we are 
related to the eternal or otherwise. Through communion with 
Christ there may be started a change in the inner life which 
all unconsciously works out as a healing spell upon others.* 

116 



- THE INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTION [XII-cl 

Withdrawal from such communion often produces an entirely 
opposite effect. 

Do we give Christ an opportunity to exert his uplifting 
ministry through us? 

Twelfth Week, Second Day : Suggestion of Eternal 
Reality 

And being let go, they came to their own company, and 
reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said 
unto them. And they, when they heard it, lifted up their 
voice to God with one accord, and said, O Lord, thou that 
didst make the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all 
that in them is: who by the Holy Spirit, by the mouth of 
our father David thy servant, didst say, 
Why did the Gentiles rage, 
And the peoples imagine vain things? 

— Acts 4: 23-25. 

It must be so that large numbers of people crave to get 
away from the tyranny of material things. They are surfeited 
by the sights and sounds of the world, without themselves 
being able to find escape into the presence of God. But they 
are ready and eager to have done for them what Words- 
worth's poetry did for John Stuart Mill. 

I heard one man say of another that when he heard him 
speak it was as if a curtain had been drawn aside and he saw 
into the eternal. A life had done what argument had com- 
pletely failed to do. Something like this happened when a 
friend heard Mr. Lincoln speak at Cooper Union in New 
York. 

It has always seemed to me that the personality of Stephen 
did some such service for Saul of Tarsus. Indeed, it would 
seem as if the apostles arrested the attention of their con- 
temporaries for their message to a large degree in this way. 
Their lives suggested, unveiled, revealed, the spiritual world. 

There are surely multitudes ready to let go their feverish 
grasp of temporal things, if only there were a sufficiently real 
revelation of what is beyond the veil of sense to capture them. 
This has been done in the past for whole communities by 
transfigured individuals. And those individuals did more for 
the moral and social uplifting of their fellows than any other 

117 



[XII-3] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

factor in the situation, for they brought men face to face 
with God. 

Is the eternal world sufficiently real to us to make it real 
to others through us? 

Twelfth Week, Third Day: Moral Originality 

Now there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout 
men, from every nation under heaven. And when this 
sound was heard, the multitude came together, and were 
confounded, because that every man heard them speaking 
in his own language. And they were all amazed and mar- 
velled, saying, Behold, are not all these that speak Gali- 
laeans? And how hear we, every man in our own language 
wherein we were born?— Acts 2: 5-8. 

Union with Christ enabled men to live beyond their sur- 
roundings. There were forces within them, they had an aim 
and a message for which their contemporaries could not ac- 
count. They were beyond their times. That is the place of 
Christianity and the function of Christians in the world. They 
were meant to be the pioneers of a program which is ahead 
of the age. The part given them to play is not born of 
eccentricity, for eccentricity may be merely aggressive self- 
consciousness. The follower of Christ is called upon to take 
a morally original part in the life of the world. For Christ 
seeks to lead the world out beyond its moral stupidities and 
repetitions. When we live in an attitude of disobedience, we 
simply live over what has been lived. It is an imitation. It 
is an echo of the past. Sin is a mere repetition of an old 
story. But as Christ gets the right of way in Christian lives, 
there is started a movement beyond the frontier of conven- 
tion. For there is no such thing as moral originality apart 
from the overture of a divine suggestion finding hospitality 
in responsive souls. Christians, and Christian churches, must 
either be reaching beyond things as they are or lose their real 
function. A Christianity which merely follows public opinion 
instead of creating it is not the Christianity of Christ. 

Are we echoes of Christ or of our surroundings? 

Twelfth Week, Fourth Day: Testimony 

He therefore answered, Whether he is a sinner, I know 
not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I 

118 



THE IXDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTION [XII-5] 
I 

see. They said therefore unto him, What did he do to 
thee? how opened he thine eyes? He answered them, I 
told you even now, and ye did not hear; wherefore would 
ye hear it again? would ye also become his disciples? — 
John 9: 25-27. 

Christ cannot be satisfied by merely doing good through the 
lives of his disciples. He has a secret to communicate, a mes- 
sage to deliver, through each one. For every Christian has 
been called to be a witness. He may not preach, but he must 
bear witness. The Christian idea of progress is to carry the 
whole of essential Christianity into the life of the world. 
Christianity not only offers through the Christian witness the 
fruit of kindly deeds, which it has grown on the tree of its 
life ; it also scatters the seeds from which the fruit has grown. 

Can there be any real progress without there being brought 
into it the fundamental message of Christ to the troubled 
soul? There are very many eagerly waiting for the Chris- 
tian's secret of inner peace, and that secret may perhaps be 
most effectively communicated through the testimony of those 
who have experienced it. Where vast numbers are confused 
is in knowing how to enter definitely into the peace of Christ. 
So much preaching is over their heads, or wide of the mark — 
they want a simple, unvarnished explanation as to how others 
have entered into Christian reality. There must be a return 
to religious conversation, free from cant, if large numbers of 
seekers are to find the way of peace. 

The witness must summon the courage to help humbly and 
tactfully the shy soul groping for light. 

Have we a spiritual secret which would be of immense 
value to those who are blindly seeking for it? 



Twelfth Week, Fifth Day: Social Sympathy 

And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I 
give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth 
me nothing. Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth 
not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. — I Cor. 13: 
3, 4. 

Christianity does not understand love to be merely another 
word for service. Service may be simply professionalism, a 
hard officialism, which tends to eliminate from service the 

119 



[XII-6] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

deepest elements in personality. We cannot eliminate love 
from service without hardening the inner life, without with- 
holding from those whom we serve that which is their due. 

The New Testament idea of love is the ordinary article at 
high pressure. This word needs reinterpretation as applied 
to social relations, for without Christian love there can be no 
abiding social cohesion. As tepid water is not an equivalent 
for steam, so mere kindly feeling is not enough for the task 
of Christian love. We are exposed to the temptations of 
brainless sentiment on the one hand and to heartless mechan- 
ism on the other. Christian love has both a great self-effacing 
sympathy and an intellectual heroism in it. The reason why 
it has often become tepid is sometimes because the intellectual 
heroism necessary in order to give it social reality has been 
lacking; in other instances the passionate sympathy has been 
wanting. We need a greater working balance between these 
two elements in Christian love. 

Is my social sympathy expressing itself through both heart 
and mind? 

Twelfth Week, Sixth Day: A Confident Spirit 

Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, 
endureth all things. Love never f aileth : but whether there 
be prophecies, they shall be done away; whether there be 
tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it 
shall be done away. — I Cor. 13: 7, 8. 

Faith in Christ creates a spirit of trust in our fellows, and 
a sanguine attitude towards the tasks in front of us. This 
may be expressed as a spirit of confidence. Without such a 
relation to society we cannot become vital factors in the 
achievement of progress. For confidence is that which makes 
corporate existence possible. Without it the family life, 
friendship, commerce, finance, could not hold together. Un- 
til, therefore, individuals are dominated by this temper 
they cannot be sharers in a progressive movement; in fact 
they may simply succeed in damaging what already exists of 
it. A man without trust in his fellows and without the spirit 
of optimism becomes anti-social. 

In our sustained association with Christ, however, both 
aspects of the spirit of confidence are strengthened. None 
were so trustful of his fellows as Jesus was. He believed in 

120 



THE INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTION [XII-7] 

the highest possibilities of the worst of men ; he committed 
the most transcendent of causes to the hands of men who had 
formerly failed. No one was ever so sanguine of achieve- 
ment in relation to the tasks in front of him as was the 
Master. 

As we appropriate this spirit of our Leader we become fit 
to cooperate in the divine enterprise of progress. 

Are we bringing something of this bearing to a panic- 
stricken world? 

Twelfth Week, Seventh Day: Intercessory Prayer 

But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with 
compassion for them, because they were distressed and 
scattered, as sheep not having a shepherd. Then saith he 
unto his disciples, The harvest indeed is plenteous, but 
the laborers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the 
harvest, that he send forth laborers into his harvest. — 
Matt. 9: 36-38. 

Those who know what prayer really means, through the 
practice of it, are convinced that this is a supreme element 
in the problem of the renewal of the world. They have 
learned that it is through prayer God gets his opportunity to 
use the human personality as a means for the conveyance of 
divine power and illumination to other lives. For inter- 
cessory prayer is not an attempt to use God for personal 
ends; it is rather the offering up of the Christian life to be- 
come a medium, an instrument, of the divine activity in reach- 
ing lives. It is thus we become co-workers with God. If God 
did his work directly upon other lives we could not cooperate 
with him. 

In other spheres than the spiritual, it is the personalities 
of men which have brought the invisible laws of God down 
to the practical needs of mankind. The gardener cooperates 
with nature in the production of a new kind of rose. The 
inventor brings a law which has always existed down to the 
actual necessities of the hour. Man rises into copartnership 
with God on behalf of man, his personality becomes the con- 
ductor of reality from the invisible down to practical needs. 
So in intercession one yields up his being to the purpose and 
power of God to become an opportunity for God. It is those 
who pray most who are most deeply convinced that inter- 

121 



[XII-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

cession fulfils a sublime function in God's contact with 
humanity. 

Is intercessory prayer a working element in our contribu- 
tion to progress? 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 



In considering some of the elements in the fundamental 
Christian contribution to social progress we are not here con- 
cerned with the question as to the ultimate social theory 
which shall govern society. 

It is not because that problem is considered to be of small 
consequence, but simply because our purpose is to find an im- 
mediate Christian point of contact with the world as it is. 
There is no large unanimity as to what is coming, or as to 
what should come, in the way of the highest form of social 
order. The literature upon this subject is almost as varied 
as it is vast. I never realized what different opinions in- 
dividuals could hold upon this topic until I heard Mr. Bernard 
Shaw and Mr. G. K. Chesterton publicly debate upon social- 
ism. That gathering appeared to me to be a veritable cave 
of Adullam, of two opposing camps in an attitude of almost 
fanatical fervor. 

While it is the duty of a Christian to think through the 
question of a satisfactory theory of social renewal, if he has 
the time, there is the immediate and undeniable duty of bring- 
ing to the social situation that which any righteous form of 
social order will require if it is to guarantee stability and 
progress. 

We have a practical relation to the world as it is today, and 
it is possible for us to bring a contribution which shall be an 
;asset in whatever may be its outlook tomorrow. One thing 
is certain, there can be no adequate attempt to realize the 
visible ideal social state except as there is first of all the 
recognition that there is an invisible one. There must be a 
spiritual apprehension of a great invisible reality before there 
can be a social attempt to achieve it. There are two uni- 
verses, if you like, an intangible and a tangible. Christianity 
is the embodiment of the invasion of the unseen universe upon 
the seen. // we are to be true to the spirit of Christ we must 
maintain a broader relation to the world situation than to 

122 



THE INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTION [XII-c] 

identify it completely with any theory of social reformation. 
Jesus Christ did not surrender his cause to any partisanship 
of his time, and no doubt the temptation presented itself, for 
zealous partisanship existed in many directions in the public 
outlook. If Jesus had made such a surrender, it would of 
course have turned into a mere local and passing movement 
his world outlook and his outlook through the ages of time. 

II 

The first thing, then, for the Christian who seeks to trans- 
late the mind of Christ into social facts is to recognize that 
the program which it is his business to fulfil is Christ's pro- 
gram. It is for him to cling to the leadership of the supreme 
Leader, to refuse to surrender to a merely popular and partial 
interpretation of it the program that Christ expects him to 
make effective. 

The temptation confronts the disciple of Christ who has a 
keen social sympathy, to break away from the leadership of 
the Leader, and to plunge into the seething welter of con- 
fusion — to do something, anything, without concern for the 
relation of the part to the whole, without vision as to what 
is -of primary and what is of secondary importance, to slash 
away at something. 

But the individual Christian who is to have a share in 
Christ's program for the coming of the Kingdom of God must 
grasp the momentous fact that the one kind of effort which 
counts from Christ's point of view is obedient effort. For 
Christ has the full program in his own keeping, and his pro- 
gram is a unit; it has a unity of scheme, and no one man can 
see his particular sphere in that scheme of things except as 
he maintains his relation to Him who is directing the cam- 
paign. 

It is only thus that there can be any kind of hope of carry- 
ing out a plan with unity of design in it, only thus that pri- 
mary things will have precedence over secondary things, and 
it may be that the secondary things will be unnecessary be- 
cause included in the primary things. It is only in this atti- 
tude that each worker and his work will come closer to every 
other worker. 

It is in this way that the Christian worker can see the 
dimensions of the social situation and be better able to diag- 
nose human unrest and discontent. 

123 



[XII-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

There is a broken and partial view of the social situation 
which is both mischievous and distressing. For one sometimes 
encounters two opposing types of workers, sometimes tragic- 
ally suspicious and hostile, and both claiming Jesus as the 
authority for their position. The one focuses wholly on the 
-social aspect, and the other wholly upon the individual and 
spiritual. It is all very lamentable, for it is the fruit of 
partial vision. It is a rending of the program of Christ, and 
•each clings to his fragment. The result is that social work 
tends to become despiritualized, and spiritual work to become 
dehumanized. The atmosphere of Pentecost does not obtain 
its opportunity among social efforts and the spirit of service 
does not get its place in relation to spiritual contemplation. 

The constant need is to maintain the unity of the program 
of Christ, not by lowering the spiritual but by spiritualizing 
the social and socializing the spiritual. This calls for a 
deeper spirituality, for it is only spiritual power which can 
weld these parts into an effective unity. 

Ill 

The Christian worker who takes his directions from his 
Master recognizes that the program of Christ is based upon 
man's spiritual condition and relations. Everything else issues 
out of that situation. It is man's spiritual nature which in- 
vests every phase of his welfare with sanctity. The spiritual 
man, however much he may see the need for social renewal, 
will never lose sight of the supreme place of emphasis. For 
example, let me quote from the late Mr. Keir Hardie, who 
was one of the earliest socialist leaders in England. He said : 
"People talked about social reform and better conditions of 
life, but the whole experience of history made it manifest that 
the mere increase of material well-being in a race only led to 
further deterioration. From an experience of fifty-six years, 
material pleasures were the least satisfying. It rested upon 
the inner life — the ego, the soul, whether life is to be noble, 
strong, clean, pure, or ignoble and degrading." That reveals 
the spiritual view, and it is all the more impressive when 
it comes from one who spent over fifty years of his life in 
social agitation. 

When a worker takes the position of laying the heaviest 
weight of blame for human failure upon social conditions, 
does he not thereby encourage some men to lie back and wait 

124 



THE INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTION [XII-cI 

for the coming of happier conditions? A man expecting a 
legacy shortly might cease to apply himself, and by a wrong 
relation to it that legacy could easily prove to be a curse in- 
stead of a blessing. If you tell a man that he cannot do good 
work until his surroundings are improved, he may believe it 
and slacken his effort. But if you tell him that he can work 
and work well, and in the meantime something is being done 
to deal with his surroundings, you are helping to preserve 
the economic soundness of the man's relation to society. The 
finest types of character have been bred in the midst of severe 
difficulties. At any rate, the point is that if the disciple of 
Christ is himself bringing economic soundness to the social 
situation, he must also encourage others so to do. He must 
keep the immediate emphasis where Christ placed it. 

On the other hand, he dare not surrender to an unwar- 
rantable optimism as to what is going to issue out of mere 
congenial social conditions if, and when, they arrive. There 
is a vague and flabby optimism which often intoxicates men's 
minds when they see the tide of material prosperity rolling in 

But so far as moral progress is concerned, such optimism 
has no sanction from Christ. Progress is not by any means 
necessarily the result of material abundance ; it is not the re- 
sult of any naturalistic evolution. It has been possible only 
as individuals yielded themselves to God as the instruments 
of God. There have been periods when the world did not 
grow better, but worse, not because God had no progressive 
program to unfold, but because he did not find human 
cooperation. Devolution is as real an historical fact as evolu- 
tion. 

Christ inspires a great optimism, but it is created in his 
presence, as men and women live under his direction, con- 
spiring to carry out his purposes. Such optimism springs 
from the triumph" of the divine will, and never from the 
mere fact of economic affluence. 

Whatever Christianity may do for progress, it must carry 
its whole soul into the problems of mankind. The Christian 
soldier of the common good cannot surrender to the social 
ideals of those who are working on another level than his in 
the various enterprises of the world. They may be successful,, 
industrious, masterful ; they may appear to be conquering the 
world, and yet at the same time they are really being conquered 
by it — as Rome, while it conquered Greece, in a still more real 

125 



[XII-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

way was conquered by Greece. . As Jesus refused to identify 
his relation to the world with any mere party program and 
thereby maintained his supreme and universal contact, so must 
we, who own Christ as Lord, live in the succession of Christ's 
relation to men, by keeping the emphasis where he put it. For 
after all that is what Christianity is here for, to lead and not 
to follow, to interpret the leadership of Christ to disillusioned 
men. 



126 



CHAPTER XIII 

Social Contacts 

DAILY READINGS 
Thirteenth Week, First Day : The Family 

Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. 
Honor thy father and mother (which is the first command- 
ment with promise), that it may be well with thee, and 
thou mayest live long on the earth. And, ye fathers, pro- 
voke not your children to wrath: but nurture them in the 
chastening and admonition of the Lord. — Eph. 6: 1-4. 

Individual life is partial life — a world of individuals would 
mean a world of incompleteness. The individual after all is 
a fragment; he is a part of the family as a branch is part of 
a tree. Without the family relation the greatest words of all 
languages would be shorn of their value and meaning. There 
would be no education for the noblest impulses in human life. 

The Christian individual stands committed to the family as 
an irreducible social unit, as a permanent institution. He is 
pledged to bring to it the highest he knows, the best that he 
has, the richest that God bestows upon him. To defraud the 
family of the best is to injure that circle in which life's su- 
preme impressions are made, and its permanent lessons 
learned. The Christian relation to the family is fundamentally 
that of spiritual and moral loyalty. The fact that Christ 
claims the first place from each does not impair the bond be- 
tween the various members of the household. 

In the highest sense it guarantees the permanence and en- 
richment of the relationship. Individual primary loyalty to 
Christ purines the affection which one brings to the family 
life. A lukewarm relation to Christ lessens the quality of 
affection given to each other. The family life without the 
encouragement of spirituality weakens and impoverishes its 
own life, but genuine family religion becomes the safeguard 
of its own highest existence, and the bulwark of society. 

Do we bring a really Christian contribution to family life? 

127 



[XIII-2] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

Thirteenth Week, Second Day: The Church 

And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the 
heginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things 
he might have the preeminence. For it was the good 
pleasure of the Father that in him should all the fulness 
dwell. — Col. i: 18, 19. 

A Christian is related to the Church historically, for it was 
through the Church that the knowledge of Christ was con- 
veyed to him. He is related to the Church biologically, because 
of his relation to Christ, and to those who are Christ's. For 
the Church grew out of the gathering together of those to 
whom Christ was the central reality of their lives. Meeting 
together in his name was their supreme social instinct, and the 
proclamation of his name was the soul of their contact with 
the world. 

The Christian's relation to the Church is governed not only 
iby the grace which he gets through it, but also by what he 
brings to it. For he owes the contribution of his worship, 
which is a corporate act. He owes the contribution of fellow- 
ship with his fellow Christians, as a part of the whole. He 
•o /es the contribution of his service in carrying out with 
others the mind of Christ. 

But it is a Church to which the Christian owes his alle- 
giance; it is to a genuine spiritual fellowship gathered into 
the name of Christ. He does not owe it to a mere organiza- 
tion. The Church of Christ is a spiritual, biological, social 
iact. 

Is our relation to the Church governed by our obligation to 
the fellowship as well as by what it brings to us? 

Thirteenth Week, Third Day: As an Employer 

Knowing that whatsoever good thing each one doeth, 
the same shall he receive again from the Lord, whether 
he be bond or free. And, ye masters, do the same things 
unto them, and forbear threatening: knowing that he who 
is both their -Master and yours is in heaven, and there is 
no respect of persons with him.— Eph. 6: 8, 9. 

I have met employers who have insisted that cooperation 
must govern their relations with their employes. Their busi- 
ness was a partnership of profit sharing, and one cannot fail 

128 



SOCIAL CONTACTS [XIII-4] 

to observe that this method is on the increase. There are 
others who say that they would willingly pursue this course, 
but their profits are so small in the best years that in order 
to keep their business going in lean years they would be com- 
pelled to levy assessments upon their employes. There are 
yet others who say frankly, "Business is business. We are 
willing to give a fair wage, but the profits are ours to use 
according to our best judgment." It is this last statement 
upon which Christian employers must have some definite con- 
viction. There are signs in our time which call for clear 
thinking, if Christian employers are to have an influential 
share in the leadership of public opinion. 

The Christian employer, however perplexed he may be re- 
garding the highest form of social order, must be willing to 
follow light wherever it leads him. He will not let his own 
material interests control him. In the meantime his relations 
with his employes will be fraternal. I knew one employer 
who spent most of his evenings visiting his sick workmen. 
Every man in that concern knew that the man at the head of 
it was his interested and sympathetic comrade. There never 
was a strike in that factory. 

Thirteenth Week, Fourth Day: As an Employe 

Servants, be obedient unto them that according to the 
flesh are your masters, with fear and trembling, in single- 
ness of your heart, as unto Christ; not in the way of eye- 
service, as menpleasers; but as servants of Christ, doing 
the will of God from the heart; with good will doing 
service, as unto the Lord, and not unto men. — Eph. 6: 5-7. 

The employe is here urged to do his duty as the servant of 
Christ, and not merely to get through with a task. 

It is this attitude of doing one's work as a Christian which 
raises a man above all kinds of servitude. While such a man 
labors, his work is baptizing his life with new power. He 
lives far above slavery to a position, for Christ has liberated 
him. He is Christ's free man, even though he has to toil 
hard through the days ; his labor is the honest expression of 
his soul. 

Besides, the relation of a Christian employe is one of good 
will. He may sometimes have to speak very frankly, but 
there is no hate or bitterness in his heart. Men can discuss 

129 



[XIII-5] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

anything, so long as the spirit is right. It is when vindictive- 
ness enters into a relationship that there is really no solution 
of a difficulty. In that temper if it is not one thing that is 
wrong, it is another. A prominent lawyer said to me not 
long ago that a great deal of litigation was simply the warfare 
X)f a vindictive spirit, which ought to have been conquered. 

In the Christian attitude toward his work and his employer, 
a man is not dependent upon human praise. He is grateful 
for appreciation, but if it does not come he is not soured 
thereby, for he is looking to his Lord for a verdict upon 
what he does. 

Do we perform our task first of all as unto Christ? 

Thirteenth Week, Fifth Day : As a Friend 

Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love 
vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave 
itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, tak- 
eth not account of evil. — I Cor. 13: 4, 5. 

A Christian learns from his Master that life's greatest 
achievement is not to get but to give. As a friend he is not 
looking for cordial declarations towards himself, but he main- 
tains kindly relations towards others. Sorrow and disappoint- 
ment await those who are constantly taking the temperature 
of the feeling of others towards them. Such an attitude mars 
many a freshman's year at college. It makes men become 
shrinking, supersensitive, and cruelly suspicious. If un- 
checked, it may be the beginning of a lifelong cynicism. 

A Christian not only counts the primary element in friend- 
ship as giving, but he has something to give, for Christ en- 
riches his deepest self. He has to see to it for his friend's 
sake as well as for his own, that he grows in the inner life. 
He must be at his best. "For their sakes I sanctify myself." 

A Christian receives friendship as well as gives it, and if 
he follows Christ he receives it for itself and not for the garb 
in which it comes. Some of the choicest friendships may 
come with no promise of worldly advantage, and in refusing 
them many have refused life's richest gifts. It is the spirit 
of worldliness which has for many emptied out the wealth of 
meaning that there is -in friendship. A merely calculating as- 
sociation with desirable people is not friendship. 

Are we looking for friends, or giving ourselves as friends? 

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SOCIAL CONTACTS [XIII-6] 

Thirteenth Week, Sixth Day: The Community 

Jesus therefore lifting up his eyes, and seeing that a 
great multitude cometh unto him, saith unto Philip, 
Whence are we to buy bread that these may eat? And 
this he said to prove him: for he himself knew what he 
would do. Philip answered him, Two hundred shillings' 
worth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one 
may take a little. One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon 
Peter's brother, saith unto him, There is a lad here, who 
hath five barley loaves, and two fishes: but what are these 
among so many? — John 6: 5-9. 

It is astonishing how many Christian people have no point 
of contact with the opportunities for service in a community. 
One is sometimes tempted to think that such service is con- 
fined to one or two classes of the population, and it is difficult 
to find out whether those other classes are not wanted, or 
whether they do not care to serve. At any rate there are 
large numbers of Christian people who ought to have a defi- 
nite personal appeal made to them for service in the town 
where they live. It may be that they are shy, lacking assur- 
ance, and they will never take the initiative. They must be 
met more than half way. Some one must lay some definite 
challenge upon them. A clearing house for the varieties of 
service in a community, where individuals could readily see 
what opportunities there are, would go far to solve the situ- 
ation as it now stands. Too often a man is asked to do some- 
thing for which he knows he is not fitted ; he refuses, and 
the matter ends there. He is not indifferent, but the right 
work has not yet been presented to him. Yet there is a 
sphere for him and he has a latent capacity for the sphere, 
but they have not yet met. 

The press of a town would surely be willing to aid in 
giving publicity to the various aspects of opportunity for 
public service. 

Have we a relation of definite service to our community? 

Thirteenth Week, Seventh Day: The Nation 

Ye are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot 
be hid. Neither do men light a lamp, and put it under the 
bushel, but on the stand; and it shineth unto all that are in 
the house. Even so let your light shine before men; that 

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[XIII-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

they may see your good works, and glorify your Father 
who is in heaven.— Matt. 5: 14-16. 

The example of Jesus proclaims every true disciple as a 
lover of his country, and as ready to live or die for his 
country. 

The truest patriotism implies that each shall bring the high- 
est that he knows, the best that is in him, to this service. No 
man is giving himself completely — even if he lays down his 
physical life — if he does not give his whole being. We must 
pass on to the nation the best we have received. We must 
transmit through our personality the fruits of all the hallowed 
sacrifices of the past. A nation can be great in itself and 
able to influence the rest of the world only as its citizens 
supply the moral reality necessary to achieve its destiny. The 
moral condition of a nation is its supreme asset, and that 
condition is neither more nor less than the sum of the moral 
qualities in all citizens. 

Arising out of patriotism, but not as a substitute for it, 
Jesus also revealed a universal contact. And it is our prob- 
lem to realize in some practical way such a Christian univer- 
sal sympathy. That may be attempted through a definite con- 
cern for world-wide Christian missionary enterprise on the 
one hand, and for the fostering of a spirit of internationalism 
on the other. 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 
I 

The individual serves most effectively only in relation to 
organized effort. Achievement everywhere is the result of co- 
operation. You find this corporate idea running through 
nature and human nature. In a beehive organization brings 
about results that could not otherwise be achieved. In human 
history the clan groups are the early expression of this princi- 
ple of combination. 

The Christian individual historically found his supreme op- 
portunity in and through the Church. Christianity has two 
main centers towards which it seeks to have individuals move 
in their service : first, the Christian community, and second, 
the Kingdom of God. 

The Christian community is based upon an instinctive spirit- 

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SOCIAL CONTACTS [XIII-c] 

ual association. In this association each has a~ relation to 
Christ and to each other. The repudiation of these relations 
is disloyalty to the whole corporate situation. 

The Church exists for the coming of the Kingdom of God. 
But there must be a Church, if there is to be a Kingdom as 
Christ conceived it, if it is to surpass the partial glimpses we 
have seen of it. If the Kingdom of God on earth is to be in 
any way an ordered, morally exact, social fact, then it must 
have an ordered, morally exact means of achievement. If it 
is to be a universal fact it can spring only from that origin 
which has a universal program and outlook. Therefore the 
disciples of Christ owe an allegiance to the Church for the 
sake of the coming of the Kingdom. 

The Church, however, is not an end in itself in its relation 
to the Kingdom; it is a means to an end. The immediate 
followers of Jesus were not guilty of falsifying the emphasis 
Jesus laid on the Kingdom idea. The mischief was wrought 
later, when the Church came to be considered as an end rather 
than as an instrument to bring in the Kingdom. 

The Kingdom of God is the other element in the idea of 
corporateness inherent in historical Christianity. 

As taught by Jesus, the Kingdom of God was at once within 
the individual, and was also social. Socially the Kingdom zvas 
to be the realisation of human relations in which the will of 
God would be both the motive and the goal. This Kingdom 
is to be realized not merely_in one sphere. of life, but in every 
department of human interest. It is the Christian ideal for 
the life of the world. 

As we have seen, for the coming of this Kingdom Jesus 
refused to be identified with any contemporary theory of 
social reformation. He would not stir from seeing the human 
situation in the light of eternal reality. 

II 

Therefore in order to have the Kingdom come in Christ's 
way and to the extent of his universal purpose, there must be 
a new turning to the Church to achieve it. For the Church 
is the extension of the life and purpose of Christ. You say — 
not as it is, and I quite agree. Large numbers of people, 
whether we like it or not, have lost faith in the power of the 
Church to realize the Kingdom in the midst of the institutions 

133 



[XIII-c] UNDER THE HIGHEST LEADERSHIP 

of society. They point to the comparative impotence of the 
Church during these heart-breaking days. 

But while that may all be very true, it is still the function 
of the Church to fulfil Christ's purpose in bringing in the 
Kingdom of God. The Church may have lost its unction, but 
it cannot lose its function. For Christ is behind it and it is 
only he who can bring in a universal Kingdom of God. What 
other agency or group of agencies could do it? Where would 
the universal scheme come from, the universal morality? It 
is not that the Church should be ignored, or scrapped, it is 
that it should be brought back into the presence of the Living 
Lord. The summons is loud to every one of us who belongs 
to the Church to come back anew under the spell of the 
living, creative Center of the Church, to dedicate ourselves 
afresh for the universal coming of the Kingdom. Then there 
is a task which must be faced — stupendous as it is, shrink 
from it as we may. 

The Church is being called by the condition of the world to 
a more serious effort than ever before towards some form of 
corporate unity. If the Church had a vital sense of the Lord's 
presence and a united purpose, in all its parts during this 
tragic time, who will say there would be no distinct message? 
But so long as the Church's life is competitive instead of co- 
operative, so long as it is driven in upon its own local, self- 
conscious, divisive existence, how can it respond to Christ's 
cosmic ambitions for it? How can the Church rebuke the 
institutions of society for their heartless competitions, so long 
•as its own practical policy moves along the same line? 

It is very easy to take refuge in happy generalizations about 
God fulfilling his purpose in a great variety of ways, and if 
the Kingdom does not come through the Church then it will 
come through other channels. But when those who are mem- 
bers of the body of Christ talk like that, are they not losing 
their conviction as to how the Kingdom is to come? Are they 
not throwing the ship's chart and compass overboard and 
merrily trusting to fate that things will come out all right? 
Where is the old warrior declaration : "I am persuaded that 
He is able"? 

Never did this old world need guidance as it requires it 
now. And there is a strong sense in the minds of multitudes 
that Christ is able to give it its fresh start. But the tragic 
fact is that Christ does not get his opportunity, because of 

134 



SOCIAL CONTACTS [XIII-cl 

the preoccupation, distraction, and rivalry of those who are 
the members of his body. 

Ill 

There are things that must be done in and for society which 
only Christ can adequately achieve. The world must have an 
increasing sense of the meaning of righteousness and of sin. 
We have seen into what a welter of moral confusion men fall 
when they let go their hold upon religion in general and vital 
Christianity in particular. It is significant to hear Mr. H. G. 
Wells say that there is no sufficient bond for the family 
apart from religion. Who quickened the darkened conscience 
of the 18th century in England? Was it not the men who 
knew Jesus Christ? 

Society must have an increasing sense that there is a soul 
behind the social fabric; that there is the possibility of 
warmth for those who freeze amidst the frigid facts of exist- 
ence ; that there is a reason for optimism ; that there is a 
basis for peace. 

It wistfully listens for a certain message upon the end and 
aim of life — for the right emphasis and proportion in living. 
It looks to see a revelation in men and women of the fact of 
eternal life, not merely as a hope, but as an actual experience 
lived out amongst the painful facts of today. It is not clear 
upon these things. And in its confusion does it not, hoping 
against fears, turn once more for a message to those who 
know Christ? While it asks for that message, it silently hopes 
that the Church will shake itself free from the world's own 
temper. A man who asks to be awakened at a certain hour 
insists that it take place, even though he beats him who does 
the awakening. Is not this the mood in which at least sec- 
tions of society turn towards those who know the secret of 
Jesus? It is as if men were saying to the Church, "Do not 
be afraid of us, do not compromise with us, do not seek our 
favor or fear our frown ; tell us what you have from your 
Lord, for we need it. We are disillusioned souls ; if you love 
us, forget yourself, and give us the gospel of a new hope." 



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